Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- I Biology and philosophy: an overview
- II Definition and demonstration: theory and practice
- 4 Aristotle's use of division and differentiae
- 5 Divide and explain: the Posterior Analytics in practice
- 6 Definition and scientific method in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and Generation of Animals
- 7 First principles in Aristotle's Parts of Animals
- III Teleology and necessity in nature
- IV Metaphysical themes
- List of works cited
- Index locorum
- General index
6 - Definition and scientific method in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and Generation of Animals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- I Biology and philosophy: an overview
- II Definition and demonstration: theory and practice
- 4 Aristotle's use of division and differentiae
- 5 Divide and explain: the Posterior Analytics in practice
- 6 Definition and scientific method in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and Generation of Animals
- 7 First principles in Aristotle's Parts of Animals
- III Teleology and necessity in nature
- IV Metaphysical themes
- List of works cited
- Index locorum
- General index
Summary
The middle term [in a demonstration] is a definition of the major term.
This is why all the sciences are built up through the process of definition.
Posterior Analytics 11.17 99a21–3Scientific method in Aristotle's biology
The relation between Aristotle's official account in the Posterior Analytics of the nature of scientific knowledge and of the means by which it is reached and his actual practice in arriving at the results presented in his special scientific writings has long been a topic of considerable study. In the recent history of attempts to account for the discrepancies between Aristotle's theory and his practice, or to explain away the apparent discrepancies, the biological works have been assigned a special role. In his famous and still influential treatment of this problem, Jaeger saw in what he took to be the thoroughgoing empiricism of the biological works the final step in Aristotle's emancipation from the Platonic view of scientific knowledge and method found in the Analytics. Students of Aristotle now agree that Jaeger's general account of Aristotle's ‘progress’ away from Platonism is untenable. But it is still widely supposed that Jaeger was at least right that there are empirical elements in the method practiced in the biological writings to which no role is given in the Analytics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology , pp. 120 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987
- 35
- Cited by