Aristotle POSTERIOR ANALYTICS Complete

Translated by G. Mure.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

84 pages - You are on Page 63

The champion of division might here urge that though these lapses do occur, yet we can solve that difficulty if all the attributes we assume are constituents of the definable form, and if, postulating the genus, we produce by division the requisite uninterrupted sequence of terms, and omit nothing; and that indeed we cannot fail to fulfil these conditions if what is to be divided falls whole into the division at each stage, and none of it is omitted; and that this-the dividendum-must without further question be (ultimately) incapable of fresh specific division. Nevertheless, we reply, division does not involve inference; if it gives knowledge, it gives it in another way. Nor is there any absurdity in this: induction, perhaps, is not demonstration any more than is division, et it does make evident some truth. Yet to state a definition reached by division is not to state a conclusion: as, when conclusions are drawn without their appropriate middles, the alleged necessity by which the inference follows from the premisses is open to a question as to the reason for it, so definitions reached by division invite the same question.

Thus to the question 'What is the essential nature of man?' the divider replies 'Animal, mortal, footed, biped, wingless'; and when at each step he is asked 'Why?', he will say, and, as he thinks, proves by division, that all animal is mortal or immortal: but such a formula taken in its entirety is not definition; so that even if division does demonstrate its formula, definition at any rate does not turn out to be a conclusion of inference.

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