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Aristotle on Scientific Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Burleigh T. Wilkins
Burleigh T. Wilkins
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

The problem. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general discussion of Aristotle's views on scientific explanation, by which I mean a discussion of Aristotle's treatment of scientific explanation, its structure and its principles, as distinct from Aristotle's own principles of explanation. By means of this distinction I hope to be excused from a discussion of Aristotle on form and matter, potentiality and actuality, and the four causes, and to avoid so far as possible the controversy among commentators concerning the respective merits of Aristotle qua naturalist and Aristotle qua pre-Thomist Thomist. I wish to be excused from treating these problems in order to approach directly Aristotle's formal treatment of scientific explanation as given in the Posterior Analytics, but if I were to be accused of introducing a distinction between parts of the Aristotelian corpus for which there is insufficient warrant, if I were told that I am making an illegitimate abstraction from the whole of which the Posterior Analytics is but a part, I should plead not guilty.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1970 , pp. 337 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1970

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References

1 Grote, , Aristotle (London, 1880), 199.Google Scholar

2 Randall, , Aristotle (New York, 1960), 56, 41.Google Scholar

3 “Aristotle's Physical System”, Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 15, 274.Google Scholar

4 Randall, op. cit., 40–41.

5 Ibid., 57.

6 The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 39 (1942)Google Scholar. Reprinted in Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, 1965), 231–243Google Scholar. See also “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”, op. cit., 245–295.

7 The formulations I have used are Ross, W. D.'. See his Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics (Oxford, 1949), 50Google Scholar.

8 Grote, op. cit., 116.

9 Randall, op. cit., 124.

10 Ibid., 185.

11 In Wiener, P. P. and Noland, Aaron : Roots of Scientific Thought (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

12 In Feigl, H. and Sellars, W. : Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

13 Randall, op. tit., 57.

14 (New York, 1960), 42–46.

15 Ross, op. cit., 54.