Q: What did the elephant say to the naked man?A: It looks O.K., but can you breathe through it?Let me begin by justifying that joke for those of you didn’t find it funny. The relationship between the morphology of the physical organs and their activities has long been a vexed issue in the philosophy of biology: the question of whether structure determines function is of course of contemporary importance in evolutionary theory. That there was a relationship between structure and function (...) was not in general a matter of doubt to the Greek theoretical biologists: but both the extent, and crucially the direction, of the dependence was. And the question need not be restricted to a consideration of the function of a particular part in isolation: when Aristotle takes issue with Anaxagoras for asserting that humans are the most intelligent species because they have hands, claiming rather that they have hands because they are intelligent, he is making a claim not just about the direction of explanation involved, but he is also implicitly at least indicating the scope of such explanations. For Aristotle, intelligence is one of the human functions: and that function necessitates the existence and development of certain organic structures. (shrink)

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises. Its main purposes are, first, to determine the function, structure, and explanatory power of teleological explanations in four of Aristotle’s natural treatises, that is, in Physica (book II), De Anima, De Partibus Animalium (including the practice in books II-IV), and De Caelo (book II). Its second purpose is to confront these findings about Aristotle’s practice in the natural treatises with (...) the theoretical picture of the structure of teleological explanations gained from Aristotle’s theory of scientific demonstration. For this purpose a new interpretation of Analytica Posteriora II.11 is presented. This study thereby contributes to recent scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of science and his philosophy of nature, while at the same time adding to our knowledge of Aristotle’s notion of teleology in terms of its explanatory merits and limits. (shrink)

Today, there are many natural sciences, one of which is physics, but there is no science in the sense of a Theory of Nature. In our everyday life, the opinion is rightly held that there is only one nature, but whether this opinion stands up to reflection is questionable. When we apply the speculation that Aristotle developed in Metaphysics Λ to his Physics, we will see, that Aristotle has developed a Theory of Nature that consists in posing the question of (...) the being of the natural being (Frage nach dem Sein des Naturseienden). The standardinterpretation wants us to believe that Aristotle founded a substance metaphysics with a corresponding theology, and that he practised natural science. But, our hermeneutical situation could lead us to an "Aristotle today" and free us from old beliefs so that we, like Thomas Aquinas and others, could learn from a contemporary Aristotle as an immediate interlocutor. One of the learning points, for example, would be that questions are more crucial than new assertions, even if they are sophisticated, and that unassertive thinking (unbehauptendes Denken) in a topical attitude can lead us to insight into the multiplicity of worlds. This insight would have immediate consequences for our behaviour towards our co-inhabitants of our planet and towards our environment. (shrink)

It is now a widespread opinion among interpreters that Aristotle’s History of Animals is not a mere collection of empirical data but has its own theoretical framework; however, there is still disagreement as to exactly what this framework is. To address the problem, the article analyzes in detail the diairetic schemes of HA I 1, attempting to overturn the common opinion that this chapter is a mere expository introduction to the study of animals’ differences. On the contrary, it will be (...) shown that in this chapter Aristotle not only applies the method of ‘multiple division’ theorized in Parts of Animals I 2–4, but also uses dividing criteria that are informed by his causal theory and his hylomorphist ontology. This analysis will therefore lead to the more controversial conclusion that HA is not an ‘early’ work by Aristotle but a mature treatise with its own specific theoretical aim: the aitiological explanation of the anatomical, eco-physiological and ethological differences among animals. (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)

In Prior Analytics 1.27–30, Aristotle develops a method for finding deductions. He claims that, given a complete collection of facts in a science, this method allows us to identify all demonstrations and indemonstrable principles in that science. This claim has been questioned by commentators. I argue that the claim is justified by the theory of natural predication presented in Posterior Analytics 1.19–22. According to this theory, natural predication is a non-extensional relation between universals that provides the metaphysical basis for demonstrative (...) science. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Parts of Animals [PA] should be seen as continuing in the tradition of those earlier natural scientists who “investigated the material principle of things and that s...

Biology is the most extensive field in the Corpus Aristotelicum. In his fundamental work De anima, Aristotle tries to fix the borders of this life science. The term ψυχή has a twofold explanatory status. On the one hand, ψυχή is understood as a principle of all living beings. On the other hand, it is understood as a cause of the fact that all living beings are alive. The paper is divided into three sections. The first part shows why Aristotle discusses (...) these issues in a work entitled Περὶ ψυχῆς. Since Pythagoras and Heraclitus, ψυχή was understood as a life principle: Pythagoras believed that men, animals and plants share the same nature: they are all ἔμψυχα and they are homogenous qua ψυχή. The second part of this article deals with Aristotle’s definition of the soul in DA II: ψυχή is the principle of all living things. This establishes the external criteria to divide living and non-living beings and the internal criteria to divide living beings. The third part of this paper is concerned with the methodological consequences of this definition: the life functions are the central explanandum in Aristotle’s biology. De anima II defines such various life-functions as nourishment, sense-perception and locomotion. These capacities contour the main fields of the philosopher’s biological investigation. For Aristotle, the faculty of reproduction is a subtype of nourishment. Reproduction is the most important and most natural function of all living beings. Genetics is, therefore, the most important field in Aristotle’s biology. (shrink)

Voltaire's Pangloss, the man who held among other things that noses were clearly created in order to support spectacles, is the very archetype of the lunatic teleologist; a caricature of sublimely confident faith in the general and undeniable goodness of the world's arrangement, a faith that managed astoundingly to survive the Lisbon earthquake and his own subsequent auto dafé. Voltaire, of course, is poking fun at such conceptions; and, no doubt, in their extreme sanguinity as well as in their apparent (...) imperviousness to devastating empirical counter-evidence, they do seem to be eminently risible notions. In the face of them we might be tempted to abandon ‘métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie’, and to agree with Candide that ‘Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’. (shrink)

Q: What did the elephant say to the naked man?A: It looks O.K., but can you breathe through it?Let me begin by justifying that joke for those of you didn’t find it funny. The relationship between the morphology of the physical organs and their activities has long been a vexed issue in the philosophy of biology: the question of whether structure determines function is of course of contemporary importance in evolutionary theory. That there was a relationship between structure and function (...) was not in general a matter of doubt to the Greek theoretical biologists: but both the extent, and crucially the direction, of the dependence was. And the question need not be restricted to a consideration of the function of a particular part in isolation: when Aristotle takes issue with Anaxagoras for asserting that humans are the most intelligent species because they have hands, claiming rather that they have hands because they are intelligent, he is making a claim not just about the direction of explanation involved, but he is also implicitly at least indicating the scope of such explanations. For Aristotle, intelligence is one of the human functions: and that function necessitates the existence and development of certain organic structures. (shrink)

En este artículo se discute la relación entre silogismo y demostración con respecto al concepto aristotélico del conocimiento científico formulado en los Analíticos segundos. La argumentación sigue tres líneas principales: (i) se ofrecen razones para rechazar la relegación de la sistematización silogística a la instancia postrera de justificación y exposición didáctica del conocimiento previamente adquirido. Como respuesta alternativa, (ii) se muestra que una explicación aristotélica necesita la silogística en virtud del papel que desempeña la causa como término medio silogístico. En (...) consecuencia, debería estar en condiciones de (iii) sostener que no resulta factible establecer firmemente los principios propios como premisas explicativas sin construir silogismos. This article focuses on the relation between syllogism and demonstration, as related to Aristotle's concept of scientific knowledge in his Posterior Analytics. Three main lines of argumentation are followed: (i) reasons are given to reject that syllogistic systematization plays a unique role as a skill for justification and didactic proof of a body of knowledge previously acquired. Alternatively, (ii) it is showed that an Aristotelian explanation requires syllogistic as to the role of cause as middle syllogistic term. Thus, it should be feasible (iii) to sustain that it is not possible to firmly establish proper principles as explanative premises without constructing syllogisms. (shrink)