Aristotelian System Research Articles

Paradigms in the eye of the beholder: Aristotle, Ptolemy and Copernicus

Abstract Accounts of the history of physics sometimes describe major paradigm shifts followed by decades and even centuries of working through the consequences of the dominating paradigm. Some examples that are often pointed to as paradigm shifts are the Copernican revolution overtaking the millennium-old Ptolemaic system of astronomy and Newton’s mechanics replacing the ancient Aristotelian system. However, when thinking about ‘paradigm shifts’, there may be various different candidates that can be identified as possible ‘paradigms’ retrospectively. Thus it may be the case that paradigms are in the eye of the beholder.

Метафизика Аристотеля

The article offers a new reconstruction of Aristotle's metaphysics, showing what place metaphysics occupies in the Aristotelian system of scientific knowledge, what its subject matter is, and into what parts it naturally divides. The author discusses in detail the Aristotelian doctrine of categories; his theory of essence; the doctrine of potential and actual being; explanatory model of four causes and the doctrine of the divine Intellect, in which metaphysics meets theology. In expounding the Aristotelian doctrine of essence, the author challenges the traditional view that the theory of essence in the Categories, where concrete things are recognized as essences in the strict and proper sense of the word, is radically different from the theory of essence in Metaphysics VII (Z), where essence is identified with form. The author shows that in both treatises Aristotle regards essence as identical with the concrete thing, but only in so far as it is taken without its accidental properties and reduced solely to the substantive ones.

Subverting Aristotelianism through Aristotle

Abstract This paper examines whether Giordano Bruno’s philosophy should be considered pantheist or immanentist—two philosophies that scholars regard as partly equivalent. However, this paper distinguishes them and argues that Bruno either identified the whole of nature with God or recognized a primary principle that is immanent, yet distinguishable, from matter. In terms of Bruno’s interpretation of the Aristotelian notions of form and matter, the difference between an immanentist view and a pantheist one lies in the role that form (or act) assumes with regard to matter (or potency). This paper maintains that Bruno interpreted and adapted Aristotle’s philosophy to find his own immanentist metaphysics, which is built on the traditional Aristotelian system. This argument was based on the reconstruction of how he used Aristotelian thought as an instrument to subvert Aristotelianism. In particular, Bruno attested that intellect exists within nature, but it is not co-extensive with the whole nature. Finally, the paper highlights how Bruno applied Aristotle’s language, method, and themes to criticize the fundamentals of Aristotelian philosophy and the related traditions.

Gersonides' Criticism of the Aristotelian System and of Averroes's Interpretation of Aristotle in his Supercommentary on the Epitome of the <em>Physics</em>

Gersonides' Criticism of the Aristotelian System and of Averroes's Interpretation of Aristotle in his Supercommentary on the Epitome of the <em>Physics</em>

Aristotle’s Syllogistic as a Deductive System

Aristotle’s syllogistic is the first ever deductive system. After centuries, Aristotle’s ideas are still interesting for logicians who develop Aristotle’s work and draw inspiration from his results and even more from his methods. In the paper we discuss the essential elements of the Aristotelian system of syllogistic and Łukasiewicz’s reconstruction of it based on the tools of modern formal logic. We pay special attention to the notion of completeness of a deductive system as discussed by both authors. We describe in detail how completeness can be defined and proved with the use of an axiomatic refutation system. Finally, we apply this methodology to different axiomatizations of syllogistic presented by Łukasiewicz, Lemmon and Shepherdson.

A Case of re-translatio studiorum: the Jewish Reception of Giles of Rome from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

From the beginning of the XIV century, many leading works by Latin scholars were translated into Hebrew only a few years after being written. This practice reveals the extraordinary process of philosophical re-acculturation that has its roots in precise ideological and social reasons: implementing contemporary Latin culture rapidly and systematically meant, for late Medieval Hebrew translators, renewing Hebrew wisdom in the light of their Christian neighbours’ thought. This was certainly the purpose of one of the protagonists of Hebrew Scholasticism, Yehudah ben Moses Romano: openly hostile to the philosophical inertia of his Jewish contemporaries, who were still convinced of being the sole holders of the truth bestowed on them from on high, he translated for his co-religionists new knowledge from his Christian colleagues. Particularly intense and sustained were the translations he made of Giles of Rome, which display transversal interests in all aspects of his work (from logic and rhetoric to physics, ethics, psychology and metaphysics). The history of the reception and success of Giles of Rome’s thought on the Jewish world goes far beyond Yehudah Romano’s intellectual project: the reference here is to Yoseph Taitazak (1480-1545 circa), who from his home in Salonica wrote the Porat Yosef, a bizarre Commentary on Ecclesiastes, in which Koholet’s words are used as an occasion for Taitazak to reinterpret the Aristotelian system through a Thomist and Aegidian lens. The inclusion of the Scholastic doctrine in Taitazak’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, however, responds to a need symmetrically specular to the work of Yehudah Romano: not to proceed with a project of updating Hebrew culture, but to show instead how the Torah is the repository of all knowledge, indeed that the Torah is the knowledge.

Euler zirkuluen erabilera intentsionalak silogistika kategorikorako

Artikulu honetan proposatuko ditut intentsionalki interpreta daitezkeen Euler zirkuluen sistema bi. Ikusiko denez, sistemok zehatz-mehatz egokitzen dira Aristotelesen jatorrizko sistemarekin eta modu artezean eta intuitiboan irudikatzen dute onartze existentziala, zeina zenbait modu silogistikok baliodun izateko behar duten. Aldi berean, proposizio partikularren irudikatzeetara ere hedatzen da proposizio unibertsalen eulertar irudikatzeek duten jatorrizko intuitibotasuna, zeren eta alboratu egiten baitira zirkuluak ebakitzea eta existitzen diren izakiak ad hoc markatzea.

Are the Aristotelian conversion rules easy for human thought?

AbstractDrawing on the theory of ‘mental models’, I have previously shown that the valid syllogisms in the Aristotelian logical system, including all of its figures and moods, are very easy for the human mind. Indeed, they can even be used to predict inferences that people can make with quantified sentences. In this paper, I further argue that, if mental models theory is correct, then also the Aristotelian conversion rules are not hard for the human mind. My account here again focuses on the distinction made by the mental models theory between canonical and noncanonical models.

To be (something) or not to be: Existence and predication in Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics

This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s logical system that allows us to break away from a presumably inescapable dilemma inherent to any attempt of justification from a strictly formal standpoint; namely, either the system stands apart from any standard system of mathematical logic — propositional logic, class theory, quantification theory, etc. — or it is lacking in consistency . While some other attempts have been made that seem to avoid this dilemma, they have always resulted in an intolerably strong restriction of the Semantics underpinning the Aristotelian system. These are, therefore, unsatisfactory solutions that undermine some of the key principles of Aristotelian metaphysics. One by-product of the solution presented here is a reappraisal of some elements in Aristotle’s theory of Being that breaks down several contemporary misconceptions on the subject. Key words: logic, Aristotle, justification, mathematical logic.

Critical Realism and Causality: Tracing the Aristotelian Legacy

Rom Harré's generative account of causality has been drawn on heavily by advocates of critical realism. Yet Harré argues that critical realists often exaggerate the extent to which powerful causal explanations of social phenomena can be developed. Certain proponents of critical realism have responded to Harré's criticisms by suggesting that it is useful to consider the relevant issues in relation to the familiar Aristotelian classification of four causes. In this paper I contribute to this debate and pursue a similar strategy. The paper adds to existing contributions in two ways. Firstly, I outline how Harré sees his generative account of causality as linking up with Aristotelian themes. It emerges that Harré at times conceives of his generative theory as part of an alternative to the Aristotelian system while at other times he draws connections between it and a reformulated account of formal causality. Secondly, I argue that when we consider the positions of Harré and proponents of critical realism on the scope of causal explanation in the social realm in relation to the interpretation of final causes offered by another philosopher profoundly influenced by the Aristotelian tradition, namely Charles Peirce, we can see both as limited in certain respects.

Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Mary Thomas Crane (bio) Critics over the years have found many ways to read the binary division of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra between the poles of Rome and Egypt.1 Recently, postcolonial theory has informed readings that emphasize the “Otherness” of Egypt: as John Gillies has argued, “the ‘orientalism’ of Cleopatra’s court—with its luxury, decadence, splendour, sensuality, appetite, effeminacy and eunuchs—seems a systematic inversion of the legendary Roman values of temperance, manliness, courage and pietas.”2 However, as these critics usually acknowledge, the contrast between the two blurs upon closer inspection, since, as Gillies again puts it, “It is only from the vantage point of Egypt that Rome actually seems Roman.”3 I want to approach the differences between Rome and Egypt in Shakespeare’s play as, in large part, cognitive differences, based in Shakespeare’s imaginative engagement with changing theories of the relationship [End Page 1] between human sense perception and scientific truth. By this I mean that Rome and Egypt seem to be the sites of very different perceptual styles, which are in turn based upon very different beliefs about the nature of the material world. The cognitive orientations of Rome and Egypt have different epistemological underpinnings, and also very different political implications. Romans in the play name their environment the “world” and perceive and understand it primarily in visual terms. Their “world” is composed largely of hard, opaque, human-fashioned materials, and its surface is divided into almost obsessively named—and conquered—cities and nations. Caesar refers to the reaction of the “round world” to Antony’s death (5.1.15), and a temporarily Romanized Antony warns Octavia that “the world and my great office will sometimes / Divide me from your bosom” (2.3.1–2).4 Egyptians, on the other hand, inhabit the “earth,” in which they imagine themselves to be immersed and which they perceive and understand through all of the senses. The “earth” is yielding, encompassing, generative, and resistant to human division and mastery: a defeated Antony asks that Caesar let him “breathe between the heavens and earth, / A private man in Athens” (3.12.14–15), and after Antony’s death, Cleopatra cries, “The crown o’ th’ earth doth melt” (4.15.63).5 As William Cunningham points out in his Cosmographical Glasse (1559), early modern English used “worlde” to denote the object of cosmography, the study of the earth and the heavens. “Th’ earth,” on the other hand, was for Cunningham the object of geography, which studied “Hylles, Mountayns, Seas, fluddes, and such other notable thinges, as are in it conteined.”6 Egyptian understanding of humanity’s relation to the earth is based partly on the Aristotelian system of elements and humors that was, by 1606, nearing the end of its dominance. Romans, on the other hand, seem to have left behind that system and its porous interrelationships between subject and nature, replacing it with a subjectivity separated from and overlooking the natural world and imagining itself as able to control it. These differing systems of thought and perception result in very different versions of nation and empire. The Roman “world” seems to be reaching toward something like what Shankar Raman has termed “colonialist space,” and toward the rational subject who can exploit it.7 Egyptian earthiness suggests both the intractability and inscrutability of nature in the face of the human will to power. [End Page 2] The attractiveness of Egypt and unattractiveness of Rome have troubled many critics, and Shakespeare’s relatively positive representation of Egypt has sometimes been read as nostalgia for an heroic past. It can also be read, I think, as nostalgia for a declining theory of the material world, the pre-seventeenth-century cosmos of elements and humors that rendered subject and world deeply interconnected and saturated with meaning.8 Gillies has argued that this very saturation of meaning, “a rich geographic tradition which is clearly already moralised, already inherently ‘poetic’ in the sense of being alive with human and dramaturgical meaning,” shapes Shakespeare’s representation of marginal, outlandish, barbarous, and exotic non-European cultures, in need of control...

Of Cathars and Creationism: Shemarya Ikriti's Polemic against a Dualist Eternalism

When studying medieval texts that defend the touchy, difficult doctrine of the world's creation, it seems advisable to first ask, to what specific menace is the author responding? Is the author standing up to groups or individuals whose denial of creation poses a present and immediate communal threat? Is he rather driven by intellectual honesty to confront an eternalist natural philosophy whose arguments appear to him compelling? To be sure, the actual situation is bound to be a combination of both: the author will be reacting to individuals or groups who find the case for eternalism convincing and, by openly subscribing to it rather than to the traditional belief in creation, threaten the community's cohesiveness. It seems to me that, in what I call the first phase of the defense of creationism, Jewish thinkers faced a wide array of non-creationist accounts, some of them newly arrived from the East, others rousing themselves from centuries of slumber. Here the communal threat dominated, and leaders who also happened to be pioneer thinkers such as Sa'adya Gaon and Isaac Israeli exerted themselves to develop an arsenal of cogent replies.1 Later thinkers, of whom Moses Maimonides is the most outstanding example, were in the main motivated by the force of Aristotle's arguments. Taken together with their conviction that acceptance of the Aristotelian system as a whole was prerequisite for meaningful belief, Maimonides and those of his ilk the handful of Jews who were perplexed by the apparent incompatibility of Scripture with science were obliged to accommodate Aristotle's eternalism rather than rejecting it out of hand.

Could the Aristotelian square of opposition be translated into Chinese?

To translate the Aristotelian square of opposition into Chinese requires restructuring the Aristotelian system of genus-species into the Chinese way of classification and understanding of the focus-field relationship. The feature of the former is on a “tree” model, while that of the later is on the focusfield model. Difficulties arise when one tries to show contraries betweenA- type and E-type propositions in the Aristotelian square of opposition in Chinese, because there is no clear distinction between universal and particular in a focus-field structure of thinking. If there could be a chance to discuss the analytic identity between the two logical systems, then it might be only constituted during a face to face conversation in the present, or, in other words, in the translation of particular propositions (singular subjective,I-type, andO-type propositions) in a particular case. The best hope for a translator is that in the actual temporally situated practice,now he or she might find a temporary way to map the concepts of one to the other with relatively little loss of structure.

Critical Justification and Critical Laws

This essay counters the claim, made by Arnold Isenberg, Mary Mothersill, and others, that there can be no straightforward justification of critical evaluations of artworks, because there can be no critical laws. My argument is that if we adopt an Aristotelian view of the value of artworks, the problem of critical laws is reduced to a mere problem of scope and is easily solved. An Aristotelian system of kind classification, which groups artworks according to common formal and narrative purposes, provides the mechanism by which we can limit the scope of critical laws in a non-arbitrary way, one that is in keeping with the actual practices of art historians and critics.

Aristote et ses devanciers. Pour une archéologie du discours délibératif

In the Rhetoric Aristotle sets forth a division of rhetoric into three species (deliberative, judicial, epideictic). This paper deals with the genesis of that division, and especially with the definition of the deliberative species in relation to the two others. Passages from Thucydides, Plato, Isocrates, and from the anonymous Rhetoric to Alexander, are taken into account, and it is argued that these texts display some classifications and criteria which foreshadow the Aristotelian system. This inquiry allows a better understanding of the intellectual context of the Rhetoric. It offers an insight into Aristotle’s working method and demonstrates that the philosopher’s system is based on pre-existing concepts and problems.

Aristotelian Physics in the Context of Teaching Science: A Historical-Philosophical Approach

Nowadays in the community of researchers there is a practically unanimous consensus about the relevance of the history of science to the educational process. In this context, Aristotelian physics was rediscovered and reassessed for didactic purposes. But unfortunately, it is very often presented in a rather fragmentary and oversimplified way that distorts the true meaning of Aristotelian concepts. Facing this problem, the purpose of the present paper is to point out some blunders that originate in the partial reading of Aristotle's work. Particularly, it intends to contribute to the following points: (i) to warn against a hurried identification of pre-scientific notions and Aristotelian physical concepts; (ii) to promote an epistemologically not naive and historiographically not anachronic interpretation of Aristotle's work on physics, both in the theoretical and in the methodological aspects; (iii) to warn against the interpretative confusion that arises from projecting the conceptual frame of contemporary science on Aristotelian physics, ignoring Aristotle's natural philosophy as a whole; (iv) to show the need of understanding the metaphysical foundations of the Aristotelian system; (v) to promote a return to the reading of the original texts.

Aristotle's voice: rhetoric, theory, and writing in America

In this book, Jasper Neel s sure-to-be-controversial resituating of Aristotle centers around three questions that have been constants his twenty-two years of experience: What does it mean to teach writing? What should one know teaching writing? And, if there is such a thing research the of writing, what is it? Believing that all composition teachers are situated politically and socially, both part of the institution which they teach and beings with lived histories, Neel examines his own life and the life of composition studies a discipline the context of Aristotle. Neel first situates the Rhetoric as a political document; he then situates the Rhetoric in the Aristotelian system and describes how professional discourse came to know itself through Aristotle s way of studying the world; finally, he examines the operation of the Rhetoric inside itself before arguing the need to turn to Aristotle s notion of sophistry a way of negating his system. By pointing out the connections among Aristotelian rhetoric, the contemporary university, and the contemporary writing teacher, Neel shows that Aristotle s frightening social theories are alive today are Aristotelian notions of discourse. Neel explains that by their very nature teachers must speak with a professional voice. It is through showing how to hear one s professional voice that Neel explores the notion of professional discourse that originates with Aristotle. In maintaining that one must pay a high price order to speak through Aristotle s theory or to assume the role of professional, he argues that no neutral ground exists either for pedagogy or for the analysis of pedagogy. Neel concludes this discussion by proposing that Aristotelian sophistry is both an antidote to Aristotelian racism, sexism, and bigotry and a way of allowing Aristotelian categories of discourse to remain useful. Finally, an Aristotelian, a teacher, and a writer, Neel responds both to Aristotle and to professionalism by rethinking the influence of the past and reviving the voice of Aristotelian sophistry.

Science as a way of knowing: the foundations of modern biology

Introduction A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE 1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism The Paleolithic View Mesopotamia Egypt 2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature The Science of Animal Biology The Parts of Animals The Classification of Animals The Aristotelian System Basic Questions 3. Those Rational Greeks? Theophrastus and the Science of Botany The Roman Pliny Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine Erasistratus Galen of Pergamum The Greek Miracle 4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview The Bishop of Hippo Scholastic Thought Islamic Science Books on Beasts Antecedents of a Revolution 5. The Revival of Science Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure William Harvey and the Study of Function Sir Francis Bacon's Great Instauration Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction The Very Small--Animalcules Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells 6. Figur'd Stones and Plastick Virtue Marine Life on Mountain Tops? Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures Baron Cuvier Quarries of the Paris Basin Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism William Smith and the Geological Column Understanding Nature in 1850 PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7. The Paradigm of Evolution First Questions The Paradigm of Natural Theology First Answers 8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses Have Life Forms Changed over Time? Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time? Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution? Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change? The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection Accounting for the Diversity of Life 9. In the Light of Evolution Comparative Anatomy Embryonic Development Classification Microstructure Molecular Processes 10. Life over Time The Origin of Life The Rise of Multicelled Organisms What Is a Phylum? Burgess Shale Metazoans Early Evolution of the Vertebrates The Age of Dinosaurs Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Human Evolution The Role of Extinction in Evolution PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS 11. Pangenesis What Is the Question? Hippocrates and Aristotle The Darwinian Answer Assembling the Data Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction Galton's Rabbits 12. The Cell Theory The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke Schwann and Cells in Animals Gametes as Cells Omnis cellula e cellula? The Technology of Cell Research 13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity The Ephemeral Nucleus Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division The Chromosomes and inheritance Gamete Formation Fertilization 14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics Model for Monohybrid Crosses Model for Dihybrid Crosses Mendel's Laws Initial Opposition to Mendelism 15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910 Sutton's Model The Cytological Basis of Mendel's Laws Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets Variations in Mendelian Ratios The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes 16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly Morgan's First Hypothesis Morgan's Second Hypothesis The Fly Room Linkage and Crossing-Over The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over Mapping the Chromosomes The Final Proof The Determinants of Sex The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics 17. The Structure and Function of Genes One Gene, One Enzyme The Substance of Inheritance The Watson-Crick Model of DNA Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins The Genetic Code PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT 18. First Principles The Peripatetic Stagirite The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought Harvey and Malpighi A Two-Millennial Summing Up Preformation versus Epigenesis 19. The Century of Discovery Von Baer's Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum Darwin's Contribution to Embryology Haeckel and Recapitulation 20. Descriptive Embryology Germ Layers The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo 21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology His, Roux, and Mosaic Development Driesch and Regulative Development Novelty in Development Cell Lineage Nucleus or Cytoplasm? Fin de Siecle 22. Interactions during Development Amphibian Organizers Secondary Organizers The Reacting Tissue The Chemical Nature of the Organizer Putting It All Together Conclusion Further Reading References Illustration Credits Index

Central Subjects and Historical Narratives

At first glance, the changes in contemporary philosophy of science necessary to accommodate the intuitions of historians about historiography are as great as those required in Aristotelian science by Copernicus' suggestion that the sun, not the earth, occupied the center of the universe. If fire instead of earth resided in the center of the universe, then the entire Aristotelian system of the four elements, humors, and polar principles had to be discarded or else modified out of all recognition and all of this just to eliminate a few epicycles from predictive astronomy.3 As might be expected, contemporary philosophers of science have been no more anxious to overthrow their entire analysis of science just to accommodate the intuitions of historians than sixteenth-century scientists were to abandon all of Aristotelian science just to eliminate a few epicycles. Thus, philosophers have been forced to argue either that historical narratives do not concern unique sequences of events or else that they are not explanatory. In this paper I shall attempt to show that the apparent conflict between historiography and philosophy of science

Toward a conceptual grammar and lexicon

Computers have made possible the collocation and rearrangement of the multitudinous tokens and relationships of language but as yet we have little in the way of useful methods for such manipulations. Probably the most systematically abstracted body of knowledge about language is in grammars. Many computational linguists, on the assumption that syntax must of necessity reflect human cognitive processes of prime importance, have thrown their energies into developing programs that will automatically identify or utilize grammatical relationships. These programs hope to deal with semantic aspects of language by incorporating data bases which specify the variety of conditions under which particular words may be used in particular grammatical contexts. But there is little reason to believe that grammar as we know it parallels cognitive processes or that it offers a sounder basis for a psychologically relevant analysis of texts than non-grammatical approaches which, for example, employ sentence length, type-token ratio, vocabulary frequency, or any of a host of other measures. Data base, to be adequate to unsystematic and metaphoric word usages, would surely have to exceed in size our largest dictionary, since it must specify all the conditions under which a word may and may not be used, rather than its dictionary meaning. This paper proposes and illustrates a cognitively relevant approach to the analysis of texts, utilizing a concept grammar and a concept lexicon. The concept lexicon is currently employed in a computer program for the automatic analysis of content. The grammatical ideas are at present mere speculation. Two familiar psychological principles are (1) that a fundamental cognitive response to stimuli is to group, classify, or categorize them and (2) that stimuli which occur in close contiguity with each other, even though of different classifications, are associated cognitively. These two principles reiterate Aristotelian ideas (Warren, 1921) about similarity and contiguity as bases for association of stimuli. Contrast was a third feature in the Aristotelian system, but may readily be subsumed under similarity. The two principles suggest that texts might be analyzed and compared for those items that link together conceptually on the basis of some element of similarity, and for those linked by having occurred in the same context.