Books D - Z: The An animal world. Mollusks, crustaceans, echinoderms, insects. Observations on animal habits. Mating and reproduction. Specifically on the reproduction of birds. Viviparous fish.

Aristotle, son of the physician Nicomachus, was born in Stagira in 384 B.C. There is little information about the early years of his life. At the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to attend the Platonic Academy. He stayed there for twenty years, from 367 to 348 B.C., when Plato died. Then Aristotle left for Assos in Troad, and after a three-year stay there, he went to Lesbos and then to Macedonia, where he took on the education of the royal prince Alexander.

When his student ascended the throne, Aristotle settled in Athens and founded his school, the Lyceum. After Alexander's death (323 B.C.), the philosopher's stay in Athens became difficult. He was forced to seek refuge in Chalcis, his mother's homeland, where he died in 322.

A universal mind, Aristotle created a vast and valuable philosophical and scientific oeuvre. Epistemology, logic, theology, physics, biology, psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics are the main fields of knowledge he explored and studied. The Alexandrian Hermippus counted Aristotle's works at 400. Lists containing 143 titles of his works have survived to us. Diogenes Laertius estimated the number of verses in Aristotelian writings at 440,000. The influence of his work on the shaping of world thought was strong for centuries, and it remains so.