Is Aristotelian Science Possible?

8/13/2019 Is Aristotelian Science Possible?

1/16

Is Aristotelian Science Possible? A Commentary on MacIntyre and McMullinAuthor(s): Jean De GrootReviewed work(s):Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 463-477Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130814.

Accessed: 29/01/2013 18:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Philosophy Education Society Inc.is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The

Review of Metaphysics.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:07:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=peshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20130814?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20130814?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pes


2/16

ISARISTOTELIANCIENCEPOSSIBLE?A COMMENTARYON MaclNTYRE AND McMULLINJEANDEGROOT

In their Aquinas Lectures, given at Marquette University in 1990and 1992 respectively, Alasdair Maclntyre and Ernan McMullin offer adefense and a critique of Aristotle's theory of science in the Posterior

Analytics.l McMullin's interpretation, informed by a lifetime of accomplishment in contemporary philosophy of science, is negativeabout the treatise as either an adequate description of natural scienceor a normative account of it. Maclntyre's engaging and penetrating essay deals generously with the picture of science in the treatise. I shallargue, however, that the two philosophers share an incorrect interpretation of the science of the Posterior Analytics as deductivist and perfectionist. Both miss the true focus of Aristotle's treatise on science,namely, distinguishing the necessary and accidental in things themselves. They share twentieth-century presuppositions about the proposition that obscure the import of the theory of demonstration, especially with respect to the role of vo?j? in an Aristotelian science.

Maclntyre sets as his aim to render plausible the classical beliefin first principles, but an underlying and more important aim seems to

be to lay out a strategy by which Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophymay enter contemporary philosophical discussion in a way that contemporary philosophers cannot refuse. Accordingly, he highlights theteleological implications of philosophical language about knowledge,arguing that thinkers like Rorty have failed to banish from their own

Correspondence to: The Catholic University of America, Department ofPhilosophy, 620 Michigan Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20064.1Alasdair Maclntyre, First Principles, Final Ends and ContemporaryPhilosophical Issues (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1990) hereafter cited as Principles, and Ernan McMullin, The Inference That Makes Science (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1992), hereafter cited as Inference. References to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics are from AnalyticaPriora et Posteriora, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982),hereafter cited with book and chapter numbers within the paper as AP.Translations from the Greek text are my own.The Review of Metaphysics 60 (December 2006): 463-477. Copyright ? 2006 by The Review of

Metaphysics

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/16

464 JEANDEGROOTdiscourse a claim of truth that presupposes principles. Maclntyre explains Aristotle's conception of science in terms of science's ownx??-o? as knowledge, placing the requirement for first principles in acontext of the growth of knowledge as guided by its final end. Theend of knowledge includes unmiddled first principles that grounddemonstrated conclusions about what cannot be otherwise. Nevertheless, while science grows, candidates for first principles remainsubject to change. One task of Thomistic philosophy of science is toprovide genealogies of scientific change written from a perspective ofthe growth of knowledge toward its x?Xo?.2

Maclntyre is implicitly responding to a charge that McMullinmakes very explicit, namely that Aristotle's picture of science has noplace for the fallibilism, which, as we have learned in modernity, is aconstant feature of the practice of science.3 This charge originates ininterpretations of AP 1.2-3. In these chapters, Aristotle presents whatseem to be logical requirements for the structure of science. He presents an axiomatic system in which there are principles taken by theknower as prior and primary, embodying what is first in nature.4 Hesays:

If, then, scientific knowing is as we hold it to be, demonstrative knowledge must be from [premises that are] true, first, unmiddled, moreknown, prior to, and causes of the conclusion (?^ a^nGoov x'eivai xaijtqcdxoov xai ?u:?oa)v xai yvcoqlu,cox8Q(ov xai jtQOX?Qcovxai aixuov xoDouujC?Q?a?iaxoc).5

These first principles must be capable of generating by deduction alltruths dependent on causes. From the modem standpoint, of course,the logical structure of an axiomatic system precludes any proof offirst principles, and hence any unchangeable (a^iexajteioxov6) conviction in the knower concerning them. Following upon this logical feature of deduction, there is persistent indeterminacy accompanyingany first principles in science, because empirical results are neverenough to decide between competing theories?

Following Kosman and Burnyeat,7 most interpreters of the Posterior Analytics parry the fallibilist objection by saying that Aristotle's

2Maclntyre, Principles, 48-9.3Ibid., 25; McMullin, Inference, 41-7.4AP 1.2.71b34-72a4.5AP 1.2.71bl9-21.6AP 1.2.72b4



4/16

ISARISTOTELIANCIENCEPOSSIBLE? 465treatment of the structure of science is never purely logical anywaybut is always embedded in an account of what constitutes a good explanation. Science (emoxr|?iri), is a normative term, and theory of science brings out implicit criteria for knowing by means of causes. Thekey is the role of causes in knowledge. McMullin's criticism on the basis of fallibilism takes this parry into account, however. His point isthat, as explanatory, Aristotle's principles cannot qualify as first. Twopoints are crucial in McMullin's critique. One is the problem of the necessity, and hence uniqueness, of causes hit upon in investigation. Forexample, in his account of why the planets do not twinkle, Aristotlecannot claim that non-twinkling is essential to the nearness of objectsand to nearness alone.8 The theory of demonstration provides no

means of ruling out other causes. Hence, knowledge through causesnever has the bi-conditional necessity which Aristotle requires for his

major premise.9 The second point is related to the first. McMullincontends that fruitful science relies on theory, and that there is precious little theory in Aristotle's conception of science or his practiceof it.10 Specifically, he charges that Aristotle's scientific universals aretied too closely to perception, and that his causes are linked to essences conceived holistically and based on the look of something.11Real structures in nature are simply inaccessible on this basis.12

We see that, in the accounts of Aristotelian science offered byMaclntyre and McMullin, both the status of first principles, or unmediated causes, and the fallibilism characteristic of any stage of the development of a science are central. Answers to the problems they raise,however, can be pursued by considering scholarship on the Posterior

Analytics recently available at the time of their writing, which theydid not take into account. For instance, both say that Aristotle's scientific practice in biology, regarded as piecemeal in method and a

7L. A. Kosman, Understanding, Explanation, and Insight in the Posterior Analytics, Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, in Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1 (1973): 374-92, andMiles Burnyeat, Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge, Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics, ed. Enrico Berti (Padua: Editrice Antenore,1981), 97-139, hereafter cited as Understanding Knowledge.8McMullin, Inference, 12-14. Aristotle treats this case inAP 1.13.9Ibid., 18.10Ibid., 14-16.11 Ibid., 8-9.12Ibid, 23-4.



5/16

466 JEAN DE GROOTposteriori, is in stark contrast to the a priori deductivism of his theory of science.13 This contention was made familiar by Jonathan Barnes, but a strong dissent to it had already been lodged by Lennox andBolton.14 They maintained that the structure of science described inthe Posterior Analytics guided Aristotle's research in biology and thatthis structure is not strictly deductivist.

In addition, a strong counterargument to the deductivist interpretation of the treatise (based on AP 1.2-3) can be found in the relationof definition and demonstration presented by Aristotle in AP 2.7-10.New interest in the issue of signification had brought these chaptersunder the scholarly microscope in the 1970s and 80s (Bolton, Ackrill,Irwin, Demoss and Devereux15). Itwas becoming clear that, in Aristotelian science, the property belonging to a subject (namely, the predicate of the conclusion, or the major term) has certain implications,because of its both existing and being demonstrated, for the status ofthe definition in the minor premise. This discovery, Iwill show, bearson both the meaning of holding definitions by vofi? and the directionof reasoning in demonstration.

Aristotle begins his account of definition and demonstration witha view of definition recognizable to a modern philosopher: definitionscannot be proven. While a definition says what something is, it can

13Maclntyre, Principles, 24; McMullin, Inference, 21-3.14Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle's Theory of Demonstration, in Articleson Aristotle I: Science, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and RichardSorabji (London: Duckworth, 1975), 65-87; James Lennox, Divide and Explain: The Posterior Analytics in Practice, hereafter cited as Divide andExplain, and Robert Bolton, Definition and Scientific Method in Aristotle'sPosterior Analytics and Generation of Animals, both in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, ed. James Lennox and Allan Gotthelf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 90-166.15Robert Bolton, Essentialism and Semantic Theory inAristotle: Posterior Analytics II.7-10, Philosophical Review 85 (1976): 514-44, hereaftercited as Essentialism ; J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Theory of Definition: SomeQuestions on Posterior Analytics II.8-10, inAristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics, ed. Enrico Berti (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1981), 359-84;Terence H. Irwin, Aristotle's Concept of Signification, in Language andLogos, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Malcolm Schofield (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982), 241-66; David Demoss and Daniel Devereux, Essence, Existence, and Nominal Definition in Aristotle's Posterior AnalyticsII.8-10, Phronesis 33.2 (1988): 133-54, hereafter cited as Nominal Definition. Other treatments of the same issue include Blake Landor, Aristotle on

Demonstrating Essence, Apeiron 19 (1985): 116-32, and Greg Bayer, Definition through Demonstration: The Two Types of Syllogisms inPosterior Analytics, Phronesis 40.3 (1995): 241-64.



6/16

ISARISTOTELIAN SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 467not establish anything concerning the existence of what is defined. In

AP 2.8, however, Aristotle adds to this view, so that by chapter 10, henames three (and possibly four) kinds of definition, all related by himin some way to demonstration. Besides the indemonstrable formulaof whatness (Xoyo? xov xl ?oxiv ?vajto?eixxo?), one type of definitionis a deduction of whatness, differing from a demonstration only inform. Another type is the conclusion of a demonstration of whatness.16 Besides these three types of definition, explicitly named inAP2.10, he mentions at the beginning ofthat chapter the so-called nominal definition (Xoyo? vo?iaxQ)or]c), which gets scientific investigationstarted by being that for which a cause is sought.

On his way to chapter 10, Aristotle shows that definition and demonstration overlap in the case of defining what has a cause other thanitself. Where the cause is a middle term, the definition is a kind of

demonstration, because definition must include the cause (AP 2.9).Also important is the distinction he makes between definitions of realversus nonexistent things, such as thunder versus goatstag. No oneknows the whatness of something nonexistent, he says.17 Only thingsthat exist have xl ?oxi, whatness or essence. Of XQay??a^o? (goatstag) we have only what the formula or the name says or signifies.This distinction leads to an important insight on the role of deductivestructure in scientific knowing for Aristotle, namely that knowledge ofthe existence of a cause (understood as some cause or other) groundsthe entire deduction.

Aristotle contends, in chapter 8, that we do not know what something is without knowing that it exists. He is thinking of things thatcan be demonstrated, for he says it is the same thing to know the xl?oXL of something and to know the cause of its existing.18 Applied to ascientific investigation underway, he calls this having something ofthe whatness (xi xoij xl 8?xl).19 He says:

To seek the 'what it is' without having 'that it is' is to seek nothing. But,for as many of those things for which we have something [ofwhat theyare], it is easier. So that insofar as we have 'that it is,' in this way we alsohave [something] toward the 'what it is.'20

16AP 2.8.94al 1-14.17AP 2.7.92b5.18AP 2.8.93a4.19AP 2.8.93a29.20AP 2.8. 93a26-9.



7/16

468 JEAN DE GROOTThe something (xl) is an observed trait known or suspected to

belong to a subject in a nonincidental way. Such a trait is a bridge between a definition and a demonstration, because it is just the sort ofthing to be a major term in a demonstration, and hence to appear inthe conclusion of a demonstration whose middle term is the cause ofthe trait. An example is an eclipse, insofar as it is a certain kind ofdeprivation of light from the moon. Knowing an eclipse simply by thefact of shadows not being cast at full moon would be incidentalknowledge. For an eclipse is not just the moon's failing to cast shadows; that may happen

on acloudy night. Rather,

aneclipse is the sortof deprivation of light that is the failure to cast shadows at full moon

on a clear night with no obstructions in sight. The point is that suchan unusual trait does not stand alone but depends on some cause.The search for an explanation of the trait implicates its unmiddledstatement of xl 8oxl (the cause outside the thing): in this case, the interposition of the earth between the moon and sun. For Aristotle,then, a nominal definition of an observed trait of this sort does showthe existence of the thing, insofar as the nominal definition gives xlxo? xl 8?XL, something of what the thing is. The nominal definition appropriately gives way, however, to a proper predication. To cite another of Aristotle's examples, Thunder is a noise in the clouds, (thenominal definition) is reformulated as, Thunder (that is, loud noise)belongs to clouds, a predication serving as the conclusion in a demonstration of whatness. Once Aristotle sorts out the different types ofdefinition, he tells us that the indemonstrable definition is the minorpremise giving the cause, and the nominal definition corresponds tothe conclusion. Aristotle treats the entire demonstration as a definition of something having a cause outside itself.

The picture of science as demonstration that emerges from theseconsiderations is quite different from the picture of Aristotelian science offered by McMullin. First of all, note that, on Aristotle's account in AP 2.10, a demonstration, as explanation, is a sort of fabric.That is, statements of whatness (minor premises) and claims of existence (conclusions) are interdependent. One supplies what the otherlacks, their combination producing something more than eitheramounts to by itself. Bolton, writing in 1975 on the issue of nominal

definitions and signification, said that nominal definitions carry aclaim of existence for their subjects, while relying upon unmiddleddefinitions to give the essence of what exists. What is named in the



8/16

ISARISTOTELIANCIENCEPOSSIBLE? 469predicate would not exist without that cause.21 We could hope thatdefinitions, which figure as premises of demonstration, share in theexistence claim of the conclusion, because they give the causes of signifying definitions. Scholars writing in the next ten years did not seesuch a strong connection between the existence of the subject of nominal definition and the unmiddled definition, however. Ferejohn sees

unmiddled definitions in demonstrations being deployed across a subject matter already known to exist, simply because it is the subject ofscientific investigation. Demoss and Devereux say that Aristotlethinks nominal definitions, taken in relation to demonstration, showexistence in the sense of making us able to discern genuine instancesof eclipse or thunder when confronted with them.22 A cautious assess

ment is that, by the time he makes his summary in chapter 10, Aristotle means by xl 8?xl cause plus observable property, and this xl 8?xlrequires the whole demonstration to be shown. In this analysis ofdemonstration, science starts not with first principles but with significant observable traits of things or states of affairs. Moreover, firstprinciples are rendered convincing23 by their involvement with theseobservables, which are understood to be such persistent features as tobe necessary to their subjects, whether part of essence or not. Reasoning in Aristotelian science thus begins with the relation betweensomething at the end of a deduction, an observed feature constantly inevidence, and something in the middle, a cause to be determined.

Let us consider how the view of definition and demonstrationsummarized in this sketch affects assumptions made by McMullin and

Maclntyre. Note first that unmiddled definitions are among the typesof premises held by the cognitive faculty Aristotle calls voi?. McMullin defines vo?c in the way most susceptible to interpretation as yielding only unprovable hypotheses: No?j? is a direct grasp of the universal already implicit in perception, and is brought about by

21Bolton, Essentialism, 533-8.22Michael Ferejohn, The Origins of Aristotelian Science (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1991), 50; Demoss and Devereux, Nominal Definition, 145-6. Demoss and Devereux say that nominal definitions do not givefully convertible predications but rather statements in which subject andpredicate are convertible for the observable instances under consideration.23It is anachronistic to speak of proof in relation to Aristotle's theory ofscience. Proof for Aristotle would have to combine two notions: showing orshowing forth (??]^oi3v, ?m?eLxvuvai) and conviction (moxL?). He does nothave a modern conception of proof.



9/16

470 JEAN DE GROOT8Jtaya)yr|. 24 Noi? is just the result of induction. In his footnote onthis statement, McMullin acknowledges interpretations of vou? thatmake it a separate faculty from ejcaycoyfi but provides no argumentagainst them. He seems to ignore the doctrine of intellectual capacities laid out in Nicomachean Ethics 6 and developed further in AP2.19, that provides for different epistemic attitudes for the knower inrelation to the content of his thought. McMullin thus interprets vou?in a very modern way as the holding of a generalization derived fromimmediate and unrefined perception. Guided by the requirements ofreasoning deductively from hypotheses within an axiomatic system,these generalizations must abide by the rules of verification and falsi

fication.In the picture of AP 2.7-10 sketched above, however, the first

principles of a science may not be first in the order of knowing, something Aristotle himself tells us.25 Nou?, however, is involved even inthe initial grasp of whatness?the xl xoi xl ?oxL?because as Aristotleexplicitly says, one does not know enough to seek a cause of a thing

without having grasped something of the whatness of the thing. Nou?gets an investigation started by its partial grasp of whatness in termsof a trait that may turn out to be either part of essence or a proper accident. In his account of packing middle terms in AP 1.23, Aristotlesays that we find causes by thickening the middle, that is, by addingunmiddled connections within the deductive structure. In this context, he says the unit in demonstration is vou?.26 Accordingly, vou? isinvolved throughout the investigative process.

The chapters we have examined from AP 2 show also that the relation of premises and conclusion works differently in an Aristoteliandemonstration than in a hypothetico-deductive system. First of all,the conclusion is necessary, not just by virtue of the form of the deduction, but because of the relation of subject and predicate in thepremises. This means that observable traits figuring in conclusionsare sifted and analyzed in a context of necessary connections. It isnot a particular connection that is assumed?for example, the nearness of the planets and their non-twinkling. What is assumed is a

more general structure of necessary connections based on the rela

24McMullin, Inference, 7.25AP 1.2.71b34-72a4 and 1.3.72b27-32.26AP 1.23.85al.



10/16

ISARISTOTELIAN SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 471tion of subjects to attributes that always belong to them. It is assumedthat a trait is situated within some set of necessary connections thatincludes a proximate cause. The purpose of investigation is to narrowthe relevant set of connections that support the trait, so as to settleupon a demonstrative structure. This is accomplished by eliminatingconditions that are incidental, or else causal but too broad or too narrow.27 There will be a back and forth process of reasoning pivoting onthe trait special enough to command an assessment of its being necessary. This means too that universals or essences are not being read offimmediate perception, but that perceptual traits are figuring in a matrix of necessary connections. Within this context, candidates forproximate cause will be weighed in relation to empirical and theoretical considerations.28 We could say that, in AP 2.7-10, Aristotle separates two aspects of proximate cause (its existence and its exact nature), and this separation renders demonstrative structure consistent

with fallibility while still providing criteria for what constitutes knowledge. Let us consider then an Aristotelian response to the unreasonable expectations about knowing first principles.

Using AP 1.2-3, McMullin sets up a standard of what he callsstrict demonstration (coto?eL^L?).29 As strict demonstration, science

requires a deduction which meets all the requirements for premisesmentioned in chapter 2. Premises of genuine science are true, first,unmiddled, more knowable, prior, and causes of their conclusions

27Of eclipse, what always holds might include models that predict recurrence, and the incidental would include other sources of occlusion of themoon's light, like dust storms. Aristotle seems to have inmind this process

when, in addressing eclipse, he shifts from the earth as screening the moon tothe moon as failing to cast shadows even when there is nothing between usand the moon (AP 2.8.93bl).28Ifwe consider explanations outside the actual natural context of theplanets and heavens, it might be possible to claim there could be othercauses than nearness for the planets not twinkling. Maybe the angels do it bythinking about the planets all the time. Knowing which explanations are

plausible depends on background knowledge of various kinds. If we consider reasonable possibilities from the natural setting of the planets, for example, an internal source of illumination like the sun, gaining reasoned conviction follows the path delineated here. William A. Wallace discusses typesof foreknowledge inModeling ofNature (Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 297-300.29What McMullin calls strict demonstration is not Aristotle's 8JTLOxf||iT]ajt?-co?. Burnyeat had addressed in earlier authors the mistake McMullinmakes here. See Burnyeat, Understanding Knowledge, in particular 99-102.



11/16

472 JEANDEGROOT(72b21). Maclntyre accepts this picture of what constitutes scientificknowledge for Aristotle. He tries to mitigate its effect, however, bydelineating a process of dialectical reasoning conducted with thenorm of strict demonstration in mind.30 As McMullin is quick to pointout, this leaves Maclntyre with the problem of accounting for how dialectical premises change their status to scientific at some point andsaying what would constitute the difference between dialectical andscientific premises in actual practice.31 This iswhere both authors arehamstrung by the modern understanding of the proposition as necessary or not, taken as a whole. Demonstration, however, relies uponthe relation of subject and predicate to make a proposition scientifically potent. Aristotle thinks that in doing science, one is working allthe time within the realm of necessary connections between a subjectand an observable trait belonging necessarily to that subject. Theepistemic status of propositions does not change from dialectical tonecessary when some critical level of certainty is reached. Propositions do not have epistemic dispositions; people do. One can be mistaken about whether one has necessary connections, but apart fromthis embarrassment, Aristotle's scientist is working within a set ofnecessary connections all the time.

Accordingly, there is no impediment to considering other sorts ofdemonstration besides the kind involving the proximate cause as middle term. This is a point Aristotle makes in discussing ?xl demonstrations.32 Many demonstrations of the fact will have ?loxl, or propterquid, form, but will lack the component of commensurate universality(f| anx? of 1.4). There are also demonstrations of ?loxl form at thelevel of proximate cause that have not yet defined the proximatecause with precision, as he says in AP 2.13-17. Comparing these imperfect sorts of demonstrations is how we learn to judge when wehave come to rest with genuine causes in an investigation.33

Modern interest in the ?xl demonstration, however, has focusedmainly on the kind that contrasts with ?loxl form, where the reasonermoves from knowledge of the effect to conclude to the cause, converting the terms of the major premise so that the cause is predicatedof the effect. Both Maclntyre and McMullin deny that there could besuch a form of reasoning, one which is not dialectical but scientific.34

30Maclntyre, Principles, 24, 34-40.31McMullin, Inference, 43-6.32AP1.13.78a23,bl3-15.33See Lennox's treatment of History of Animals in Lennox, Divide and

Explain, 104-6.



12/16

ISARISTOTELIAN SCIENCE POSSIBLE? 473This form of reasoning makes more sense, however, in the context ofAP 2.7-10. If there are necessary connections of the sort Aristotle envisions between subjects and observable traits?and in propositions,between subjects and signifying predicates?then these connectionsare, for the investigator, a ladder traversable in either direction. Wecan treat a connection of subject and observable trait as a biconditional, as long as we have reasonable expectation that the observable is a property. This is the form of reasoning of many contemporary scientific articles. The aim is to convince the reader that the investigators' ascription of cause or dependency is correct by tracing apath of a posteriori reasoning in accordance with the necessity newlybrought into relief by the investigators. The path to conviction, it isassumed, is an a posteriori route.

How, then, should one interpret AP 1.2-3, including those elements that seem to make 8moxf|?iT] an axiomatic system defined by

logical rigor and the certainty of its first premises? In AP 1.2,?jtLOxrijiT] ajtX ? (scientific knowledge in the proper sense, or knowledge simpliciter) is defined by Aristotle, not in terms of its degree ofperfection

orimpossibility of error, but

in terms of its proper object.Scientific knowledge is of what cannot be otherwise.35 He reiteratesthe connection of 8JiLaxr|?ir| outAxo? and not capable of holding other

wise in later chapters.36 Demonstration is understood as followingupon this connection, being a syllogism productive of knowledge ofthe necessary (ejuoxr^ovLXOv).37 The treatment of the character ofpremises of demonstration comes third in this account of scientificknowledge.

The connection between necessity and knowledge simpliciter iskey to understanding Aristotle's list of requirements for premises of

34Maclntyre, Principles, 35; McMullin, Inference, 17-18. See also McMullin, Truth and Explanatory Success, in Aristotle and ContemporaryScience I, ed. Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 60

71.35AP1.2.71bl5.36AP 1.4.73a21 and 1.6.74b6, 74bl5.37AP 1.2.71bl8. Demonstration also involves awareness on the part ofthe knower that the premises give necessary connections. InAP 1.33, Aristotle says that one may deduce using observables and causes that are necessarywithout being aware of their necessary connections. In that case, one is not

demonstrating. Indeed, two people may hold the same syllogism, one as amatter of fact, the other as a demonstrated necessity. This contrasting casespeaks to the significance of Aristotle's statement about ?moxf|[iri ajt?xo? atthe beginning of AP 1.2 (71bll), that one knows not only the cause but alsoknows that the cause is the cause of the very thing under consideration.



13/16

474 JEANDEGROOTdemonstration in chapter 2?true, primary, unmiddled, more knowable, prior, and cause of the conclusion.38 These requirements are likethe first lines drawn in a preliminary sketch of demonstration. A morecomplete picture requires the types of xaO'a?x? predication in chapter 4, because there Aristotle treats the subject/attribute structure ofnecessity in things. The essential element in the preliminary sketch ispresented in terms of a point relevant to his wider philosophical concerns:

For that because of which (?l'o) a trait belongs [to a subject] has thetrait to a greater degree?for example, that because of which we love ismore dear. So, if we know and hold conviction through primary[things], these also we both know and are convinced of to a greater de

gree, because through those also the consequents (x? ??oxsQa) hold.39The priority of that on account of which we love and that by which weknow is causal priority, but it is inevitably also a priority in knowledge. An example of this dual priority would be knowing that theearth casts a circular shadow on the moon because it is a sphere. Ofthe two statements,

1) a sphere is a circle when projected on a surface, and2) in the present case of lunar eclipse, the earth is casting that circularshadow on the moon as part of its being a spherically shaped body,

we understand 1) in a more fundamental way and with a clearer conviction than 2). The connection of sphere and circle is more known(yv(OQL^o)X8Qov) because it is the cause in the way outlined by his reference to xo c|)lXov. Causal connections are taken and known as un

middled in demonstration, and the most fundamental causal connections remain unmiddled even with further investigation. Unmiddledis the criterion closest in meaning to first in Aristotle's list of re

quirements of premises.It is sometimes thought that premises of demonstration must al

ways be absolutely first, because of Aristotle's reference to the onehaving scientific knowledge (x?v 8JUGx??i8vov ?jtXca?) being steadfastin his conviction (a?i8x?jteLOXov)40?more literally, unchangeable in

belief or not subject to change by persuasion.41 I suggest, however,

38AP 1.2.71b20-2.39AP 1.2.72a30-32.40AP 1.2.72b4.



14/16

ISARISTOTELIANCIENCEPOSSIBLE? 475that unchangeability of conviction has to do with the priority criterionfor premises. As early as AP 1.1, Aristotle has begun to build the casethat demonstration, if it is a coherent notion at all, involves priority.

He resumes this point at the end of chapter 2, saying itmakes no sensethat one could be more convinced of conclusions than one is convinced of the premises from which conclusions follow.42 What ismostrequired for one to be demonstrating is to be clear about what is priorand what is consequent among necessary predications.

Aristotle's reference to unchangeability of conviction comes immediately after this comment and just before his rebuttal, in chapter 3,of those who present problems for demonstration. There are 1) those

who say there are no first premises and so no demonstration becauseof the infinite backward regress set afoot, and 2) those who make allpropositions about necessary connections demonstrable, so that every premise is also always a conclusion of some demonstration. Priority is crucial to seeing the flaw in the claim of the circular demonstrators,43 but it is also involved in his rebuttal of the infinite regressargument. For if premises are prior, as those who deny infinite regress admit, then for demonstration to be possible, there must be astop to the backward reach for premises. This means there is inde

monstrable knowledge.44 Aristotle readily accepts this consequenceof priority, because of the causal priority he makes central to hisaccount. Some effect will follow without mediation from a cause.Other effects are mediated by additional conditions or circumstances.

Certainly, at this point, demonstration begins to take the shape ofan axiomatic deductive structure. There is no indication, however,that Aristotle seeks to reduce the number of first principles to an economical Newtonian, or even Euclidean, number for every science.Furthermore, demonstration is not sharpened by redesigning premises so that more conclusions follow from them (the route towardperfection in a modern axiomatic system). Instead, Aristotle seeksthe level of commensurate universality that will capture the cause

41Aristotle may have inmind that the belief of the scientific knower isjust not the type to be subject to persuasion (jt8?68LV or oU?iJt8L68LV [71a9]),since it is about what cannot be otherwise. See also Nicomachean Ethics6.6. 42AP 1.2.72a33.43AP 1.3.73a4-644AP 1.3.72bl9.



15/16

476 JEANDEGROOTwithout remainder in a demonstrative syllogism within the deductivestructure.45 Most importantly, demonstration does not depend entirely on premises being unmiddled but can proceed from premisesthat are deducible, as long as those premises are prior and related tothe proximate cause of the thing. He reiterates that demonstration isfrom necessary premises and what is demonstrated otherwise cannothold,46 and he presses home the point by saying that, if premises arenecessary, one cannot help but demonstrate.47 Necessity and priority,even more than firstness or commensurate universality, are thesalient features of premises of emoxf|?iT] out?xo?.

More could be said, by drawing upon examples of different kindsof ?xl demonstrations, to substantiate this approach to the place offirst principles in Aristotle's account of demonstration. These passages from the first six chapters of AP 1 provide at least the frame

work for understanding how one might have a grasp of necessary connections imperfectly but still be demonstrating, as long as theinvestigator is on the trail of genuine connections. Nominal definitions of things that have a xl soxl provide the empirical data that sustain this process. It is by seeking the xl 8?xl that causal priority is established within the demonstrative structure.

I have argued that the deductivist reading of Posterior Analytics,common to the interpretations of McMullin and Maclntyre, is handicapped by a narrow conception of voD? and a modern preoccupation

with the structure of axiomatic systems. The focus of interpretationof Aristotelian science should be the contrast of necessary and accidental. I suggest that AP 1.2-3 should always be read in relation toboth Aristotle's treatment of signifying traits in AP 2.7-10 and his account of thickening the middle in AP 1.20-3. Demonstration dependsupon a network of necessary connections in things themselves. This

45Since Aristotle says that the xaO'atk? and the f| am? (the per se andthe commensurately universal) are the same (AP 1.4.73b29), there is an implicit aim to the development of knowledge of any thing, namely, to take foran unmiddled premise an effect predicated of its proximate cause. Maclntyre discerns this directionality in his insightful interpretation of a science asdeveloping in accordance with its own x?Xo? as knowledge. He characterizesthis directionality in terms of perfected science (Principles, 27-8). His insight is, nevertheless, helpful in introducing a notion of the ethics of investigation (Principles, 33, 42).46AP 1.6.74M4-15.47AP 1.6.74M7.



16/16

ISARISTOTELIANCIENCEPOSSIBLE? 477network supports reasoning that proceeds either a priori or a posteriori and that can discern causes either proximate or distant. Reasoning can be messy, incomplete, and a posteriori, and still be followingthe criteria for demonstration in the Posterior Analytics.48

The Catholic University of America

481am grateful to Prof. Kurt Pritzl, O.P., for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Part of this paper was presented at the meeting of theAmerican Maritain Association in November, 2006.

Is Aristotelian Science Possible?

Documents

Transcript of Is Aristotelian Science Possible?