Aristotle on the "Great Chain of Being"

Most of the concepts about the nature of living things in the early modern era were derived from the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle wrote about the concept of distinct types of organisms that could be distinguished from all the rest. Aristotle was interested in much more than the biological world, and attempted to build a theory of the world as a whole. As part of this theory, he believed that all of nature could be …

…and so on down the line to the peasants with each social class "stuck" in its place. The Great Chain of Being as described by Aristotle was adapted to the religious doctrine of Christianity through time to the early modern era as describing the fixity of the natural world. The chain was later used to show how the ladder was fit into the religious aspect of hierarchy as well as the political classes of humanity.