Graziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Plato at the Academy in Athens.
Aristotle accepted Plato’s belief in a final spiritual explanation of the universe, but unlike Plato, he maintained that understanding the universe can be best achieved by careful empirical observations of phenomena. Aristotle accumulated a great store of observational fact and is believed to have initiated modern science with his observational and inductive methods--that is, making inferences from specific observations to more general principles.
Remarkably, Aristotle also developed the deductive methods that also characterize science--that is, making inferences from general principles to specific events, which is a critical part of experimental science. He was a prolific writer, and his works have been among the most influential in all of human history.