mohammad amin baradaran nikou; gholamreza zakiany; malek hoseini; hasan miandari
Abstract
The structure of Aristotle’s Science is deductive. It needs the premises that cannot be deduced. Therefore, knowledge of the premises of science is an important stage in scientific research. Aristotle, in Analytics and Topics, suggests induction and dialectic for this stage. Aristotle's ...
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The structure of Aristotle’s Science is deductive. It needs the premises that cannot be deduced. Therefore, knowledge of the premises of science is an important stage in scientific research. Aristotle, in Analytics and Topics, suggests induction and dialectic for this stage. Aristotle's commentators disagree about this. For example, Bolton prefers induction and Irwin prefers dialectic. Aristotle, according to Bolton’s interpretation, is an empiricist; he starts his researches from particular sense data and then discovers the general principles of science by induction. Irwin believes that scientific researches of Aristotle, as a rationalist philosopher, begins from special kind of reputable opinions (ενδοξα) and then the principles of science are known by a specific dialectic. This paper shows the differences between two interpretation of Bolton and Irwin; observing the issue of the methodology for recognizing the principles of science. Then, we investigate some important difficulties of their interpretations and, finally, suggest some ideas for a better interpretation.
mohammad amin baradaran nikou; gholamreza zakiany; malek hoseini; hasan miandari
Abstract
Aristotle, in Posterior Analytics, A.2, introduces the principles of science. In Post An, A10, He describes three kinds of foundations of science. There seem to be some discrepancies between the classification in A.2 and three kinds of the foundations in A.10. It is ...
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Aristotle, in Posterior Analytics, A.2, introduces the principles of science. In Post An, A10, He describes three kinds of foundations of science. There seem to be some discrepancies between the classification in A.2 and three kinds of the foundations in A.10. It is also not clear which of these principles and foundations can have all the features of a premise of science. This paper represents the puzzles that arise in interpreting the texts in question. It describes the Aristotle’s principles of science and suggests that only one kind of them can be considered as a premise of science; the principles that assume both the subject of science is and what it is. It is necessary to distinguish between Aristotle's premises of science, the foundations of science and the prior knowledge. The puzzles are solved with the help of this distinction and notes from other texts in Post An. So a consistent interpretation between A.2 and A.10 is achieved. The proper interpretation helps to understand Aristotle’s epistemology correctly.
