The Aims of Dialectic

The sustained use of homonymy in the first book of Topics reflects its function as a tool of dialectical practice. In Top. Alpha 15 specifically, Aristotle devotes one chapter to retailing various kinds of arguments for detecting ambiguity among terms for dialectical reasoning. In this chapter, homonymy has a primarily negative discriminative function, inasmuch as it is used to establish a lack of synonymy, or univocity, in the senses of terms (or among things). For example, in Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle uses homonymy to show how the term λευκός (leukos), “light” or “bright,” is ambiguous insofar as it refers to a quality of sound as well as of color (cf. Top. 106b6–8). As will become apparent more fully in subsequent chapters, Aristotle's method of homonymy in Top. Alpha 15 differs from the more complex form of homonymy in, say, the Physics or Metaphysics. In Top. Alpha 15, Aristotle employs homonymy as a binary sorting of synonymous from non-synonymous terms (or things), while in Meta., Phys., and EE he focuses on the similarities among things having common attributes or shared natures. Yet it would be misleading to conclude that the search for common attributes or natures is unknown to Top. Alpha 15. For, even here we find Aristotle interested in observing cases of homonyms with related definitions.