CALCULATING CREATURES: ANCIENTS AND MODERNS ON UNDERSTANDING OF NUMBER IN ANIMALS

Abstract

In his work Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate, philosopher of ind Richard Sorabji demonstrates Aristotle, in addition to arguing is the only rational animal, isolates a num ber of other qualities and endowments he considers to be unique to humans.1 Aristotle asserts, for example, alone of has meaningful speech (Pol. 1253a 10-19); alone can experience happi ness (PA 656a 6-7); and alone has a capacity for contemplation (EN 1178b 29-30). In his T?pica, part of the Organon on logic, Aristotle offers an intriguing variation on this alone of animals commonplace. He ar gues there one type of error in definition occurs when, although the subject of the definition falls within a genus, it has not been placed within its genus before the definition is stated. Hence, if one were to define body as that which has three dimensions or man as that which knows how