Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 1.19-34

Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 1.19-34
Author:
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472501756

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements of logical validity and explanatoriness which he first formulated. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27-34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science concerns the same scientific genus as the superordinate, but a different species. This volume contains the first English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 1.9-18

Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 1.9-18
Author: Philoponus,
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472500369

In this part of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle elaborates his assessment of how universal truths of science can be scientifically explained as inevitable in demonstrative proofs. But he introduces complications: some sciences discuss phenomena that can only be explained by higher sciences and again sometimes we reason out a cause from an effect, rather than an effect from a cause. Philoponus takes these issues further. Reasoning from particular to universal is the direction taken by induction, and in mathematics reasoning from a theorem to the higher principles from which it follows is considered particularly valuable. It corresponds to the direction of analysis, as opposed to synthesis. This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 2

Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 2
Author: Philoponus,
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472501594

The Posterior Analytics contains Aristotle's philosophy of science. In Book 2, Aristotle asks how the scientist discovers what sort of loss of light constitutes lunar eclipse. The scientist has to discover that the moon's darkening is due to the earth's shadow. Once that defining explanation is known the scientist possesses the full scientific concept of lunar eclipse and can use it to explain other necessary features of the phenomenon. The present commentary, arguably ascribed to Philoponus incorrectly, offers some interpretations of Aristotle that are unfamiliar nowadays. For example, the scientific concept of a human is acquired from observing particular humans and repeatedly receiving impressions in the sense image or percept and later in the imagination. The impressions received are not only of particular distinctive characteristics, like paleness, but also of universal human characteristics, like rationality. Perception can thus in a sense apprehend universal qualities in the individual as well as particular ones. This volume contains an English translation of the commentary, accompanied by extensive commentary notes, an introduction and a bibliography.

Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning

Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning
Author: David Bronstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-03-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191037915

'All teaching and all intellectual learning come to be from pre-existing knowledge.' So begins Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. David Bronstein sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, on Bronstein's reading, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epist?m? and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind's ascent from sense-perception of particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Bronstein also highlights Plato's influence on Aristotle's text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, Bronstein uncovers an instance of Meno's Paradox (a puzzle from Plato's Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, he argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing's essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes. Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, epistemology, or philosophy of science.

Al-Farabi, Syllogism: An Abridgement of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics

Al-Farabi, Syllogism: An Abridgement of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics
Author: Saloua Chatti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350127019

The philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi (c. 870-c. 950 CE) is a key Arabic intermediary figure. He knew Aristotle, and in particular Aristotle's logic, through Greek Neoplatonist interpretations translated into Arabic via Syriac and possibly Persian. For example, he revised a general description of Aristotle's logic by the 6th century Paul the Persian, and further influenced famous later philosophers and theologians writing in Arabic in the 11th to 12th centuries: Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Avempace and Averroes. Averroes' reports on Farabi were subsequently transmitted to the West in Latin translation. This book is an abridgement of Aristotle's Prior Analytics, rather than a commentary on successive passages. In it Farabi discusses Aristotle's invention, the syllogism, and aims to codify the deductively valid arguments in all disciplines. He describes Aristotle's categorical syllogisms in detail; these are syllogisms with premises such as 'Every A is a B' and 'No A is a B'. He adds a discussion of how categorical syllogisms can codify arguments by induction from known examples or by analogy, and also some kinds of theological argument from perceived facts to conclusions lying beyond perception. He also describes post-Aristotelian hypothetical syllogisms, which draw conclusions from premises such as 'If P then Q' and 'Either P or Q'. His treatment of categorical syllogisms is one of the first to recognise logically productive pairs of premises by using 'conditions of productivity', a device that had appeared in the Greek Philoponus in 6th century Alexandria.

Explaining an Eclipse

Explaining an Eclipse
Author: Owen Goldin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472105960

An excellent analysis of Aristotle's philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics

Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 1.1-3

Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 1.1-3
Author: Catherine Osborne
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472501314

Until the launch of this series over fifteen years ago, the 15,000 volumes of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constituted the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or other European languages. In this, the first half of Philoponus' analysis of book one of Aristotle's Physics, the principal themes are metaphysical. Aristotle's opening chapter in the Physics is an abstract reflection on methodology for the investigation of nature, or 'physics'. Aristotle suggests that one must proceed from things that are familiar but vague, and derive more precise but less obvious principles to constitute genuine knowledge. His controversial claim that this is to progress from the universal to the more particular occasions extensive apologetic exegesis, typical of Philoponus' meticulous and somewhat pedantic method. Philoponus explains away the apparent conflict between the 'didactic method' (unavoidable in physics) and the strict demonstrative method described in the Analytics. After 20 pages on Chapter 1, Philoponus devotes the remaining 66 pages to Aristotle's objections to two major Presocratic thinkers, Parmenides and Melissus. Aristotle included these thinkers as an aside, because they were not engaged in physics, but in questioning the very basis of physics. Philoponus investigates Aristotle's claims about the relation between a science and its axioms, explores alternative ways of formalising Aristotle's refutation of Eleatic monism and provides a sustained critique of Aristotle's analysis of the Eleatics' purported mistakes about unity and being.

Aristotle and Philoponus on Light

Aristotle and Philoponus on Light
Author: Jean De Groot
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2015-08-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317380630

Originally published in 1991. Philoponus’ long commentary on Aristotle’s definition of light sets up the major concerns, both in optics and theory of light, that are discussed here. Light was of special interest in Neoplatonism because of its being something incorporeal in the world of natural bodies. Light therefore had a special role in the philosophical analysis of the interpenetration of bodies and was also a paradigm for the soul-body problem. The book contains much about the physiology of vision as well as the propagation of light. Several chapters investigate the philosophical theory behind what came to be known as ‘multiplication of species’ in medieval light theory. These issues in the history of science are placed within an analysis of Neoplatonic development of the distinction between Aristotle’s kinesis and energeia. The book treats Philoponus’ philosophy of mathematical science from the point of view of matter, quantity, and three-dimensionality.

On Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.8-13

On Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.8-13
Author: Alexander (of Aphrodisias.)
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1999
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

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