Chapter Summary. In this chapter and the next I explore the ways in which Aristotle uses the results of one natural inquiry as starting points for inquiry in another area. This is a practice in which Aristotle routinely indulges, and yet there is, at least prima facie, a problem with him doing so, given his views about how we arrive at first principles and the propriety of those principles to specific domains. In APo. i.7–13, he allows that geometric and arithmetic premises can be used in a range of fields of inquiry he refers to as ‘subalternate’ branches of mathematics, which he elsewhere describes as ‘the more natural of the mathematical sciences’ (i.e., optics, astronomy, mechanics, and harmonics). However, whether and, if so, how this practice might apply within the science of nature is never explicitly addressed. In this chapter, I address this question by exploring the dependence of Aristotle’s discussion of the application of the concepts ‘right’ and ‘left’ to the motions of the heavens on his discussion of directional dimensions in De incessu animalium.

Chapter Summary. The long, introductory chapter of the De anima provides a detailed and complicated erotetic structure for a norm-governed inquiry into the soul. Answering the complex list of questions laid out in that chapter provides the norms that govern Aristotle’s critical discussion of his predecessors in de An. i and his own positive account of the soul in de An. ii–iii. In this chapter, I will begin with a careful study of that introductory chapter from the standpoint of what we can learn about Aristotle’s methodos for an inquiry into the soul, and then turn to a study of the way in which the norms derived from answering the questions laid out in de An. i.1 govern the inquiry that ensues. One surprising result of this study is that, contrary to a widespread assumption, the de An. is, for good reason, not simply one of a number of contributions to natural science.

Chapter Summary. Metaph. Ε.1 provides a deceptively clean map of scientific knowledge, differentiating three forms of theoretical knowledge (first philosophy, mathematics, natural science) from each other and theoretical knowledge as a whole from practical and productive knowledge. The focus of this chapter will be on natural science (ἡ φυσικὴ ἐπιστήμη, 1025b19), considered as the ultimate goal of natural inquiry. Given the results established up to this point about Aristotle’s general account of inquiry, my aim in this chapter is to answer two related, more specific questions about natural inquiry

One should explain in the following way, for example, breathing exists for the sake of this, while that comes to be from necessity because of these. But ‘necessity’ sometimes signifies that if that – that is, that for the sake of which – is to be, it is necessary for these things to obtain, while at other times it signifies that things are thus in respect of their character or nature. For it is necessary for the hot to go out and enter again upon meeting resistance, and for the air to flow in. This is directly necessary; and it is as the internal heat retreats during the cooling of the external air that inhalation and exhalation occur. This then is the manner of proper inquiry, and it is concerning these things and things of this sort that one should grasp the causes.

Chapter Summary. Book i of the Posterior Analytics articulates necessary and sufficient conditions for the achievement of unqualified scientific knowledge, among which is being in possession of first principles of demonstration that themselves are indemonstrable. Book ii, an investigation of inquiries leading to knowledge of essences and causes, describes stages on the way to that goal, each stage looked at from two different perspectives: definitions expressing knowledge of essences and demonstrations expressing knowledge of causes. It has proven difficult to read this second book as a unified discussion, and that has led to a great deal of literature focused almost exclusively on its last chapter, on the assumption that this is where Aristotle provides his answer to the question of how we achieve knowledge of those indemonstrable first principles. But the description of that process in ii.19 is widely viewed as insufficiently robust to explain how first principles arrived at by such a process could possess the epistemic authority Aristotle claims for them.

Dante refers to Aristotle as “il maestro di color che sanno,” the master of those who know. But Aristotle typically refers to the works that have come down to us as ‘inquiries’ or ‘investigations,’ and in the pages that follow, I will make a case for Aristotle as “il maestro di color che cercano,” the master of those who inquire. The chapters to follow attempt to get clarity on Aristotle’s conception of inquiry, insofar as the goal of inquiry is scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη). Does Aristotle see inquiry, as he clearly sees explanation, as a process constrained by epistemic norms – norms of inquiry, as I am calling them? That is, given that Aristotle has clearly articulated ideas about what the goal of scientific inquiry looks like, does he also have clearly articulated norms that must be adhered to if one is to achieve that goal?

Chapter Summary. In this chapter, we turn to Aristotle’s inquiry into the formation of uniform bodies in Mete. iv and explore the ways in which the investigations reported in PA ii and GA ii and v are dependent on it. Aristotle often insists on the paramount importance for natural inquiry of searching for ends as causes of natural processes, and thus of teleological explanations in understanding the natural world. Yet, as we are about to see, in Mete. iv he develops independent, material-level explanations of the formation of uniform bodies, including the uniform parts of animals. Looking carefully at this text will thus further our understanding of the normative constraints on inquiry into nature. What are the limits on material and teleological explanation in an Aristotelian science of nature? Moreover, looking at the interplay between Mete. iv and the biological study of the coming to be and being of uniform parts provides a second rich case study by which to explore the nature of the dependence of one natural inquiry on the results of another.

Chapter Summary. Both Aristotle’s investigation of animals and his investigation of soul begin with long and detailed methodological discussions, and both of those discussions eventually take the form of a series of questions that the investigation needs to answer. The two discussions are quite different, and the questions that are highlighted are also different – and yet both are recognizably framed in terms of Aristotle’s Analytics and Metaphysics. In the next two chapters we will focus on PA i and de An. i.1 as case studies of how Aristotle’s views about the way differences in the target of inquiry, as well as our epistemic access to, and our qua-perspective on, the target, must influence the norms that govern that inquiry. These case studies will also be an opportunity to investigate the ways in which the ‘erotetic shape’ of an inquiry is provided by Aristotle’s metaphysics and epistemology and to explore the way in which Aristotle’s methodological approach to an investigation is influenced by the ‘state of the art’ in a given domain.

Chapter Summary. Aristotle uses the word μέθοδος in a variety of crucial passages in the works that constitute his studies of nature, and in two distinct, yet overlapping, ways: it can refer to the norms of research appropriate to a domain-specific investigation, and it can refer to such an investigation carried out according to such domain-specific norms. It thus forms a conceptual bridge between the domain-neutral norms of APo. ii discussed in the previous chapter and the domain-specific norms that will be discussed in the remaining chapters. In this chapter, I investigate the uses of this concept in Aristotle’s writings on nature. By comparing them with his use of the term in other fields, and the uses of ὁδός and μέθοδος in Plato and in the Hippocratic On Ancient Medicine, it emerges that Aristotle has rich and sophisticated views about ‘proper ways of proceeding’ in an investigation.