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Aristotle

2021-12-13 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Aristotle
Votey panel for Aristotle
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic imagines a time traveler going back to meet Aristotle with an urgent warning. The traveler tells Aristotle that Europeans will spend "the next two thousand years believing basically everything you say." Aristotle, understandably, asks the traveler to make this quick.

The traveler explains that later thinkers won't critically examine Aristotle's ideas -- "they'll just sort of uncritically repeat everything." Aristotle's reaction in the final panel is a delighted "AHAHAHAHA! GENIUS!" -- he's thrilled rather than concerned.

The humor targets the historical reality that Aristotle's writings were treated as near-infallible authority throughout the medieval period, particularly in European scholastic philosophy. Many of his claims -- about physics, biology, and other natural phenomena -- were accepted without empirical testing for centuries. The joke is that instead of being horrified that his speculative ideas would be taken as gospel truth, Aristotle is ecstatic about achieving the ultimate intellectual legacy: having people uncritically parrot your opinions for two millennia. It's a commentary on how authority figures in any era might prefer loyal followers over critical thinkers.

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