Theophrastus - Biography

Theophrastus, was born around 371 BC in Lesbos, Grecce. Theophrastus was a successor of Aristotle. Most of what is known about his life comes from Diogenes Laërtius and his Lives and opinions of Eminent Philosophers, written at an unknown time, most likely around 300 AD. Having studied in Plato's school when young, he later became attached to Aristotle who left to him his writings, the guard of his children, and designated him as the head of the Lyceum in Athens after his departure from Athens and later his death. Theophrastus lead the Athens Lyceum for 35 years, greatly expanding the amount of students. He died around 287 BC at the age of 85 and was honoured at a public funeral attended by a large amount of the Athenian population. His actual name was Tyrtamus and the nickname Theophrastus, by which he became known later, was given by Aristotle and literally means "divine expression". Before dying he famously complained about the short duration of life, that it ended just when one was beginning to live. Theophrastus did not eat meat as he argued that non-human animals can feel, sense and reason just as much, and that eating them was therefore unjust.

Theophrastus was a prolific writer on a wide variety of subjects. His works on botanics greatly influenced medieval science. He also wrote on ethics, logic, biology, physics, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, and the like. Many fragments of his writings have survived including; Enquiry into Plants, On the Causes of Plants, On Moral Characters, On Stones, On Sensation, as well as parts of Physics, and Metaphysics. Nevertheless, the majority of his work has been lost as Theophrastus is believed to have written around 227 works. Most of his writings are very close to Aristotle's, although at times richer in detail, emphasizing on his empiricist side. It is nevertheless hard to precise the full extend of his work as so much has been lost. His most famous saying is "life is ruled by fortune, not wisdom", but Theophrastus is anything but short of witty one-liners. He once told a man, that preserved silence throughout a whole banquet that "If you are an ignorant man, you are acting wisely; but if you have had any education, you are behaving like a fool." His favorite expression was "Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."

His primary goal appears to have been to continue the research of Aristotle in the field of natural history. His most important works are the ones on botanics Enquiry into Plants (De Historia Plantarum)and On the Causes of Plants (De Causis Plantarum), both having survived almost in their entirety. In these books, the first systematization of the botanics is laid out which made him for many the father of botany. The works covers methods of preparing the soil, growth and fecundation of plants, its uses as food, as medicine, extending on the properties of a great variety of plants and categorizing them by their sizes, localities, and modes of reproduction. Although by contemporary standards the works are at times absurd, it nonetheless provided acurate information about the properties of plants. He is known to have greatly travelled through Greece researching plants, to have had a garden of his own, and to have gained great insight into many foreign plants brought by military expeditions of Alexander the Great. He viewed the changes observed in plants as natural, as opposed to miraculous.

Another important work of Theophrastus is Characters (or Moral Characters, or Ethical Characters), a work on caricatures. It is thought that Menander, comedy dramatist that studied in the Athens Lyceum, was most likely influenced by Characters. The work consists of short definitions or sketches of moral types, producing a good reflection of the life of his contemporaries. While some historians see Characters as a separate, independent work, others see it as part of a broader system from which the other parts were lost. The work is known to be one of the first, if not the very first, attempt to systematize moral characters. Centuries after his death, Theophrastus found many imitators for this kind of writing, in special Jean de La Bruyère, who translated Characters into french in the XVII Century.

In his writing on Ethics, Theophrastus claimed that happiness was not a direct outcome of virtue and therefore questioned the primacy of the value of morality. When it came to pleasure and happiness, his work distanced from that of Aristotle which can be seen from the fact that Theophrastus favored a contemplative mode of life set free from social constrains.

In Theophrastus treatise On Stones, he goes on to classify them based on their reaction to heat, on their hardnesses, and on their power of attraction. He describes a great variety of stones according to their use and origins. He writes on coal and it's use as a source of heat by metal-workers, he writes on the minerals used on the fabrication of glass, of different pigments, of plaster. He traces the origins of pumice-stones to volcanos, of pearls to shell-fish, and speaks about fossilized remains of organic life. Theophrastus was also the first known person to have made reference to pyroelectricity, the capacity, by certain materials, to produce voltage when heated or cooled. From his text as well as from a later text by Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia from 77AD) the science of mineralogy emerged, arguably the founding science for geology.

On other writings, Theophrastus wrote at length on the elements of speech. He distinguished direct expressions from metaphorical expressions, as well as developing on the emotions of speech. He distinguished as well the way speech refers to things and refers to the one who listens to it. When writing of logic he spoke of the unity character of judgement, of different kinds of negations, and of differences between unconditional and conditional necessity. On his writings on deductive reasoning, he developed on the reduction of arguments to a syllogistic form and his formulations seem to differ little from the ones of Aristotle. His and Aristotle's doctrines of proof, were many years later considered by Galen of Pergamon, to be the best ones of their kind.

It was in his doctrine of motion that Theophrastus departed from Aristotle. Theophrastus thought motion as a category proper to the realm of nature, something that would therefore not require an explanation separate from it. He claimed that if animal life and heavenly bodies were to be explained in relation to nature, that motion should s well. He also did not limit himself to the categories previously laid down by Aristotle and extended it to all categories. He, as Aristotle, viewed motion not as an end on itself but as a means to an end outside of it. For Theophrastus activity meant motion independent from it being the activity of souls, of desires, of bodies, or of spirits. Although not actively opposing it, it can be deducted that the idea of the spirit as something totally independent from the body must have seemed a difficult one for Theophrastus to accept. Furthermore, he stated that motion is the foundation of all change and rejected the classical doctrine of the four elements arguing that fire should not be considered a primary element as it needs another material for its existence and therefore a composite.

In his Metaphysics, Theophrastus questioned Aristotle's teleology saying that the idea that all things are related to an end is not an easy one. He suggest that while purposiveness and an effort after the best are qualities to strive for, that it does not follow that every activity is a means to end and that there is such thing as activity without an end. Theophrastus in general seemed to have preferred to concentrate on the formulation of problems rather then on solutions when the investigation overstepped the limits of experience. In another opposition to Aristotle, Theophrastus saw space as something without substance, that has only to do with position and arrangement of bodies.

Many other fragments of his works survived, exploring a great variety of topics. From On Sense Perception, there are fragments of Dizziness, Sweat, Palsy, Smells, and Honey. From History of Physics, there are fragments of Fire, Winds, Waters, and Storms.