History of Science and Methodology: The Significance of Aristotle’s Treatises

Abstract The study is devoted to highlighting the legacy of Aristotle from the point of view of its modern interpretation. Also, this work has a didactic character, since the structure of the proposed educational material corresponds to the main milestones of the life and work of an outstanding thinker of antiquity. The article emphasises the importance of studying Aristotle’s biological knowledge in modern sciences, in particular in interdisciplinary studies, teaching methods, in the methodology of sciences, etc. The authors recommend scientists who work in the field of natural sciences, as well as teach these sciences to students in educational institutions, to take into account the principles of Aristotle’s scientific picture of the world, since Aristotle was the first in the history of science to present a scheme of scientific research methods and provide a complete classification of animals. He also proposed a hierarchy of levels of life, created a scheme of causality in biology, initiated the doctrine of distribution and the principle of analogy, laid the foundations of embryology, enriched the categorical apparatus of science (whole and its part, species and genus, functions, form and matter, movement, primary cause, entelechy, substance, soul, etc.), which are still used in various fields of scientific knowledge.