Like Socrates, Plato was chiefly interested in moral philosophy and despised natural philosophy or scientific philosophy. .

             Plato's influence extended long past his own life and, indeed, never died. The Academy remained a going institution until 529 AD. Plato's philosophy even after the school was closed maintained a strong influence of the thinking of the Christian Church. It was not until the thirteenth century when Aristotle gained dominance.

             Aristotle was born after Plato in 384 B.C and is universally considered one of the great thinkers of the ancient world. He became a student at Plato's Academy at the age of seventeen. After being a student Aristotle became a teacher at the Academy and he remained there for twenty years. He left the Academy after Plato died and Speusippus assumed the leadership. He began to travel in the Greek Islands; soon he ended up living on the island of Lesbos where he began most of his biological writings.

             Soon he became the tutor the young Alexander the Great. When Alexander became the king he protected the Academy, and at the same time sent Aristotle to Athens to found a rival establishment in Athens. In 335 B.C Aristotle began his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy had been narrow in its interests but the Lyceum, under Aristotle pursued a broader range of subjects. [Allan 7] During this time that he ran the school he wrote the treatises (or lecture notes) which now form his works. He unlike Plato was an advocate of natural philosophy. His works included important ideas on zoology and psychology, with his most famous work on metaphysics. According to Aristotle, "metaphysics studies whatever must be true of all existent things just insofar as they exist and it studies the general conditions which any existing thing must satisfy." [Allan 8] .

             Both these great philosophers had a huge impact on how universities and scholasticism is today. They began the first two schools which many of the philosophers of the middle ages went to influencing them to do work they never would have thought of before.