ABSTRACT
What follows is a summary of the consensus of the traditional accounts of Aristotle’s life. Bom in 384 at Stagira, a Greek town not far from the borders of the semi-barbarian kingdom of Macedonia, Aristotle grew up under the influence of the Hippocratic tradition of medicine which his father practised and which may well have influenced him by its emphasis on empirical investigation and respect for the evidence of concrete particularities. The Politics shows a
number of cases of thinking on Hippocratic lines, particularly in the emphasis on taking account of geographical, topographical and climatic factors in organising the ideal polis.
