Fourfold Typology of Scientific Questioning in the Posterior Analytics
Keywords:
Aristotle, posterior analytics, type of questions, demonstration, science, scientific understanding, existenceAbstract
Aristotle’s famous dictum is that the answer to »Why is it?«, which states a cause, and the answer to the »What is it?«, which states an essence, are identical. The purpose of this article is to discuss a problem related to the beginning of the second book of the Posterior Analytics, where Aristotle develops his theory of four types of questions that guide any scientific inquiry. He says that we can ask (a) whether a subject is qualified by some predicate (89b26), or (b) why some subject is qualified by some predicate (89b30), or (c) whether some subject is (89b32), or (d) what some subject is (89b34–5). These fourfold taxonomy of questions refers to the objects »that it is« (to hoti), »why it is« (to dioti), »whether it is« (to ei estin) and »what it is« (to ti estin). Aristotle seems to have different strategies to combine them into pairs: it seems that (a) and (c) are unified in the question where there is a middle term (meson), and (b) and (d) are unified in the question what the appropriate middle term is. I argue that »whether it is« is primarily existential, but has many other qualifications, which are probably inconsistent with the basic intention of this type of questioning, for example in the case of »particular« (epi merous) or »unqualified« (haplos) cases.Downloads
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