The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)
Page 31
Clearly, then, there exists a class of arguments of this kind, and it is at this kind of ability that those aim whom we call sophists. Let us now go on to discuss how many kinds there are of sophistical arguments, and how many in number are the elements of which this faculty is composed, (35) and how many branches there happen to be of this inquiry, and the other factors that contribute to this art.
2 Of arguments in dialogue form there are four classes:
Didactic, Dialectical, Examination-arguments, and Contentious arguments. Didactic arguments are those that reason from the principles appropriate to each subject and not from the opinions held by the answerer (for the learner should take things on trust): dialectical arguments are those that reason from premisses generally accepted, to the contradictory of a given thesis: examination-arguments are those that reason from premisses which are accepted by the answerer and which any one who pretends to possess knowledge of the subject is bound to know—in what manner, (5) has been defined in another treatise: contentious arguments are those that reason or appear to reason to a conclusion from premisses that appear to be generally accepted but are not so. [165b] The subject, then, of demonstrative arguments has been discussed in the Analytics, while that of dialectic arguments and examination-arguments has been discussed elsewhere: let us proceed to speak of the arguments used in competitions and contests. (10)
3 First we must grasp the number of aims entertained by those who argue as competitors and rivals to the death. These are five in number, refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism, (15) and fifthly to reduce the opponent in the discussion to babbling—i. e. to constrain him to repeat himself a number of times: or it is to produce the appearance of each of these things without the reality. For they choose if possible plainly to refute the other party, or as the second best to show that he is committing some fallacy, or as a third best to lead him into paradox, or fourthly to reduce him to solecism, i. e. to make the answerer, (20) in consequence of the argument, to use an ungrammatical expression; or, as a last resort, to make him repeat himself.…
34 [182a] As to the number, then, and kind of sources whence fallacies arise in discussion, and how we are to show that our opponent is committing a fallacy and make him utter paradoxes; moreover, by the use of what materials solecism is brought about, (30) and how to question and what is the way to arrange the questions; moreover, as to the question what use is served by all arguments of this kind, and concerning the answerer’s part, both as a whole in general, and in particular how to solve arguments and solecisms—on all these things let the foregoing discussion suffice. It remains to recall our original proposal and to bring our discussion to a close with a few words upon it. (35)
Our programme was, then, to discover some faculty of reasoning about any theme put before us from the most generally accepted premisses that there are. For that is the essential task of the art of discussion (dialectic) and of examination (peirastic). [183b] Inasmuch, however, as it is annexed to it, on account of the near presence of the art of sophistry (sophistic), not only to be able to conduct an examination dialectically but also with a show of knowledge, we therefore proposed for our treatise not only the aforesaid aim of being able to exact an account of any view, but also the aim of ensuring that in standing up to an argument we shall defend our thesis in the same manner by means of views as generally held as possible. (5) The reason of this we have explained;1 for this, too, was why Socrates used to ask questions and not to answer them; for he used to confess that he did not know. We have made clear, in the course of what precedes, the number both of the points with reference to which, and of the materials from which, this will be accomplished, (10) and also from what sources we can become well supplied with these: we have shown, moreover, how to question or arrange the questioning as a whole, and the problems concerning the answers and solutions to be used against the reasonings of the questioner. We have also cleared up the problems concerning all other matters that belong to the same inquiry into arguments. In addition to this we have been through the subject of Fallacies, as we have already stated above.2 (15)
That our programme, then, has been adequately completed is clear. But we must not omit to notice what has happened in regard to this inquiry. For in the case of all discoveries the results of previous labours that have been handed down from others have been advanced bit by bit by those who have taken them on, whereas the original discoveries generally make an advance that is small at first though much more useful than the development which later springs out of them. (20) For it may be that in everything, as the saying is, ‘the first start is the main part’: and for this reason also it is the most difficult; for in proportion as it is most potent in its influence, so it is smallest in its compass and therefore most difficult to see: whereas when this is once discovered, (25) it is easier to add and develop the remainder in connexion with it. This is in fact what has happened in regard to rhetorical speeches and to practically all the other arts: for those who discovered the beginnings of them advanced them in all only a little way, whereas the celebrities of to-day are the heirs (so to speak) of a long succession of men who have advanced them bit by bit, (30) and so have developed them to their present form, Tisias coming next after the first founders, then Thrasymachus after Tisias, and Theodorus next to him, while several people have made their several contributions to it: and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the art has attained considerable dimensions. Of this inquiry, on the other hand, it was not the case that part of the work had been thoroughly done before, (35) while part had not. Nothing existed at all. For the training given by the paid professors of contentious arguments was like the treatment of the matter by Gorgias. For they used to hand out speeches to be learned by heart, some rhetorical, others in the form of question and answer, each side supposing that their arguments on either side generally fall among them. [184a] And therefore the teaching they gave their pupils was ready but rough. For they used to suppose that they trained people by imparting to them not the art but its products, as though any one professing that he would impart a form of knowledge to obviate any pain in the feet, were then not to teach a man the art of shoe-making or the sources whence he can acquire anything of the kind, (5) but were to present him with several kinds of shoes of all sorts: for he has helped him to meet his need, but has not imparted an art to him. [184b] Moreover, on the subject of Rhetoric there exists much that has been said long ago, whereas on the subject of reasoning we had nothing else of an earlier date to speak of at all, but were kept at work for a long time in experimental researches. If, then, it seems to you after inspection that, such being the situation as it existed at the start, our investigation is in a satisfactory condition compared with the other inquiries that have been developed by tradition, (5) there must remain for all of you, or for our students, the task of extending us your pardon for the shortcomings of the inquiry, and for the discoveries thereof your warm thanks.
* * *
1 165a 19–27.
2 183a 27.
Physica
Translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER
1. The scope and method of this book.
2. The problem: the number and character of the first principles of nature. 185a 20. Reality is not one in the way that Parmenides and Melissus supposed.
3. Refutation of their arguments.
4. Statement and examination of the opinions of the natural philosophers.
5. The principles are contraries.
6. The principles are two, or three, in number.
7. The number and nature of the principles.
8. The true opinion removes the difficulty felt by the early philosophers.
9. Further reflections on the first principles of nature.
BOOK II
A.
1. Nature and the natural.
B.
2. Distinction of the natural philosopher from the mathematician and the metaphysi
cian.
C. The conditions of change.
3. The essential conditions.
4. The opinions of others about chance and spontaneity.
5. Do chance and spontaneity exist? What is chance and what are its characteristics?
6. Distinction between chance and spontaneity, and between both and the essential conditions of change.
D. Proof in natural philosophy.
7. The physicist demonstrates by means of the four conditions of change.
8. Does nature act for an end?
9. The sense in which necessity is present in natural things.
BOOK III
A. Motion.
1, 2. The nature of motion.
3. The mover and the moved.
B. The infinite.
4. Opinions of the early philosophers.
203b 15. Main arguments for belief in the infinite.
5. Criticism of the Pythagorean and Platonic belief in a separately existing infinite.
204a 34. There is no infinite sensible body.
6. That the infinite exists and how it exists.
206b 33. What the infinite is.
7. The various kinds of infinite.
207b 34. Which of the four conditions of change the infinite is to be referred to.
8. Refutation of the arguments for an actual infinite.
BOOK IV
A. Place.
1. Does place exist?
209a 2. Doubts about the nature of place.
2. Is place matter or form?
3. Can a thing be in itself or a place be in a place?
4. What place is.
5. Corollaries.
B. The void.
6. The views of others about the void.
7. What ‘void’ means.
214a 16. Refutation of the arguments for belief in the void.
8. There is no void separate from bodies.
216a 26. There is no void occupied by any body.
9. There is no void in bodies.
C. Time.
10. Doubts about the existence of time.
218a 31. Various opinions about the nature of time.
11. What time is.
219b 9. The ‘now’.
12. Various attributes of time.
220b 32. The things that are in time.
13. Definitions of temporal terms.
14. Further reflections about time.
BOOK V
1. Classification of movements and changes.
224b 35. Classification of changes per se.
2. Classification of movements per se.
226b 10. The unmovable.
3. The meaning of ‘together’, ‘apart’, ‘touch’, ‘intermediate’, ‘successive’, ‘contiguous’, ‘continuous’.
4. The unity and diversity of movements.
5. Contrariety of movement.
6. Contrariety of movement and rest.
230a 18. Contrariety of natural and unnatural movement or rest.
BOOK VI
1, 2. Every continuum consists of continuous and divisible parts.
3. A moment is indivisible and nothing is moved, or rests, in a moment.
4. Whatever is moved is divisible.
234b 21. Classification of movement.
235a 13. The time, the movement, the being-in-motion, the moving body, and the sphere of movement, are all similarly divided.
5. Whatever has changed is, as soon as it has changed, in that to which it has changed.
235b 32. That in which (directly) it has changed is indivisible.
236a 7. In change there is a last but no first element.
6. In whatever time a thing changes (directly), it changes in any part of that time.
236b 32. Whatever changes has changed before, and whatever has changed, before was changing.
7. The finitude or infinity of movement, of extension, and of the moved.
8. Of coming to rest, and of rest.
239a 23. A thing that is moved in any time directly is in no part of that time in a part of the space through which it moves.
9. Refutation of the arguments against the possibility of movement.
10. That which has not parts cannot move.
241a 26. Can change be infinite?
BOOK VII
1. Whatever is moved is moved by something.
242a 19. There is a first movent which is not moved by anything else.
2. The movent and the moved are together.
3. All alteration pertains to sensible qualities.
4. Comparison of movements.
5. Proportion of movements.
BOOK VIII
1. There always has been and always will be movement.
2. Refutation of objections to the eternity of movement.
3. There are things that are sometimes in movement, sometimes at rest.
4. Whatever is in movement is moved by something else.
5. The first movent is not moved by anything outside itself.
257a 31. The first movent is immovable.
6. The immovable first movent is eternal and one.
259a 20. The first movent is not moved even incidentally.
259b 32. The primum mobile is eternal.
7. Locomotion is the primary kind of movement.
261a 28. No movement or change is continuous except locomotion.
8. Only circular movement can be continuous and infinite.
9. Circular movement is the primary kind of locomotion.
265a 27. Confirmation of the above doctrines.
10. The first movent has no parts nor magnitude, and is at the circumference of the world.
PHYSICA1
(Physics)
BOOK I
1 [184a] When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, (10) conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained. For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore in the science of Nature, (15) as in other branches of study, our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its principles.
The natural way of doing this is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not ‘knowable relatively to us’ and ‘knowable’ without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, (20) but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature.
Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to sense-perception, (25) and a generality is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts. [184b] Much the same thing happens in the relation of the name to the formula. (10) A name, e. g. ‘round’, means vaguely a sort of whole: its definition analyses this into its particular senses. Similarly a child begins by calling all men ‘father’, and all women ‘mother’, but later on distinguishes each of them.