Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction

Джонатан Барнс

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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Chapter 18
Practical Philosophy
The preceding chapters have been concerned with the theoretical sciences. Aristotle himself devoted most of his time to that great branch of knowledge, but he did not ignore the practical sciences. Indeed, two of his most celebrated treatises, the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, belong to the practical branch of philosophy.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
'Nature does nothing in vain' is a regulative principle for scientific enquiry. Aristotle knows that some aspects of nature are functionless. But he recognizes that a grasp of function is crucial to an understanding of nature. His slogans about the prudence of nature are not pieces of childish superstition, but reminders of a central task of the natural scientist.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Chapter 15
Psychology
One important distinction within the natural world is found in the fact that some natural substances are alive and others inanimate. What marks off the former from the latter is their possession of what in Greek is called psuchê. The word 'psucê' (from which 'psychology' and other such terms derive) is usually translated as 'soul', and under the heading of psuchê Aristotle does indeed include those features of the higher animals which later thinkers associate with the soul.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Aristotle was aware of the dangers of hasty generalization; for example, 'the cause of the ignorance of those who take this view is that, while the differences among animals with regard to copulation and procreation are manifold and unobvious, these people observe a few cases and think that things must be the same in all cases'. But Aristotle has nothing to say in general terms about the problems raised by generalization: those problems -- problems of 'induction' as they were later called -- did not receive detailed philosophical attention until long after Aristotle's death.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Plato, having given abstract Forms the leading role in his ontology, was led to regard the intellect rather than perception as the searchlight which illuminated reality. Aristotle, placing sensible particulars at the centre of the stage, took sense- perception as his torch.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
The ultimate source of knowledge, in Aristotle's view, is perception. Aristotle was a thoroughgoing 'empiricist' in two senses of that slippery term. First, he held that the notions or concepts in terms of which we seek to grasp and explain reality are all ultimately derived from perception; 'and for that reason, if we did not perceive anything, we would not learn or understand anything, and whenever we think of anything we must at the same time think of an idea'. Secondly, he thought that all science or knowledge is ultimately grounded on perceptual observations.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Chapter 13
Empiricism
How are we to acquire the knowledge which will eventually be packaged into neat Euclidean sciences? How do we get in touch with the substances which constitute the real world, and how do we chart their changes? How do we hit upon their causes and uncover their explanations? Deductive logic is not the answer: Aristotle's syllogistic was never supposed to be a means of finding out facts about the world -- it provides a system within which knowledge can be articulated, not a device for making discoveries.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Accidental phenomena have causes. Aristotle does not admit causeless events into the natural world. But he does allow that not all events are amenable to scientific understanding; for not everything exhibits the sort of regularity which science requires.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Thus in Aristotle's view, there are accidental phenomena in nature, and they are not subject to scientific knowledge. Does Aristotle infer that the world is to some extent indeterminate, that not all events are bound together by the nexus of causation? No -- on the contrary, he supposes that the exceptions to natural regularities occur because of, and can be explained in terms of, peculiarities in the matter of the thing in question.
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innashpitzberg12 июля 2013 г.
Aristotle refers to his fourth cause as 'that for the sake of which' and 'the goal'. It is usually known as the 'final' cause ('finis' is the Latin for 'end' or 'goal'). The normal way of expressing final causes, as Aristotle's example indicates, is by using the connective 'in order to' or 'in order that': 'He is walking in order to be healthy.'
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