This article seeks to take a step towards recognizing that science can deal with the concrete and individual as well as the universal. I shall concentrate on some of Aristotle’s texts, as there is a long tradition going back to Aristotle, according to which science deals only with the universal, although his work also contains texts of a very different tenor. He tries to improve the process of definition as an attempt to bring science closer to the concrete, but ends (...) up realizing that there are some unreachable limits. There is, however, a second Aristotelian approach to the problem in Metaphysica M 10, a passage which takes scientific rapprochement to the individual further by introducing a distinction between science in potential and science in act. The former is universal, but the latter deals with individual substances and processes. Aristotle himself acknowledges here that in one sense science is universal and in another it is not, a position that raises important ontological and epistemological problems. Some suggestions are also offered concerning the kind of truth applicable to science in act, that is, practical truth.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Aristotle; Practical truth; Science in act; Science of the individual; Definition. (shrink)

Aristotle’s biology is based on his method of division of animal kinds by multiple differentiae. This results in complex clusters of non-subordinate terms, between which Aristotle seeks to establish universal correlations. The form of these, however, does not correspond to that prescribed by his theory of syllogism. Mereological relations between terms are not linear and quantification is far more complex than the distinction between universal and particular propositions. Thus the axiomatisation of Aristotle’s biology requires a tool designed for analysing such (...) complex universal correlations into valid syllogistic premises. Prosleptic-like premises turn out to be the solution outlined by Aristotle. They make it possible to handle both the logic of consequence which translates from and into mereological relations between term clusters, and the complex quantification required by division based on multiple differentiæ, through the instantiation of a variable ideally consisting of indivisible groups of animals. (shrink)

En este artículo se examinan, en primer lugar, los desarrollos aristotélicos acerca del fenómeno del psitacismo (la repetición inútil de palabras y expresiones), tal y como son expuestos en las Refutaciones sofísticas. Estos análisis son utilizados, en segundo lugar, para aclarar un argumento propuesto en Metafísica B de acuerdo con el cual el ser no es un género.