Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the Macedonian city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of ancient Greece. At eighteen, he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BCE). His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.