Ninth Edition CoverGraziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)

Strato (ca 310-270 B.C.) was one of the last of the empirical philosophers. He was a successor to Aristotle at the Lyceum in Athens from 287 to 269 B.C. 

Strato accepted the Ionian cosmology with its emphasis on natural events, its basic belief that the universe is orderly and knowable, and its rejection of mysticism. For Strato, the best method of acquiring knowledge was empirical observation and manipulation--that is, experimentation. He performed numerous experiments on air and water, demonstrating many of their properties, and from his experimental work, developed some general explanatory principles about nature. 

By Strato’s time, however, Ionian science was already in decline. Strato’s scientific view stood as an alternative to the mystical views propounded by religion and, later, by philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, whose ideas were being revived and gaining in popularity. Then, as now, these views (mysticism vs. rational/empiricism) were in conflict, leading to the near total suppression of one by the other. The early empirical science of the Ionians was suppressed for nearly 1900 years.

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