Aristotle
Sir David Ross
Sixth Edition, Routledge, 1995

"The root nature of induction seems to be, for him, that it is the 'leading on' [fn103] of one person by another from particular knowledge to universal. [fn103: epagein, epagesthai are used in Plato of the 'adducing' of witnesses or examples ... but in Aristotle the object of the verb is more usually the person who is 'led on' - An.Post. 71a21, 24, 81b5; Metaphysics 989a33 ... from this seems to come the use of epagein with object = 'to make an induction' Topics 156a4, 157a21, 34; and from this in turn comes the usage to katholon epagein Topics 108b10....]" (ROSS, p. 39) [PSA: note the connection here to teaching and, more broadly, conversation]

"The Posterior Analytics are for the most part occupied with demonstration, which presupposes the knowledge of first premises not themselves known by demonstration. At the end of the book [PA II.19] Aristotle comes to the question how these are known. What is the faculty by which we know them; and is the knowledge acquired, or is it latent in us from the beginning of our lives? It is hard to suppose that this, which must be the most certain of all knowledge, is in us from the beginning without our knowing it; it is equally hard to see how if not present from the start, it can be acquired, since (unlike demonstrative knowledge) it would have to be acquired without any basis of pre-existing knowledge. To avoid both these difficulties, we must suppose that we start with a humbler faculty from which this knowledge may be developed. Such a faculty Aristotle finds in perception, the discriminative power inborn in all animals. The first stage in the development from sense to knowledge is memory, the 'remaining of the percept' when the moment of perception is over. The next stage is 'experience,' of the framing, on the basis of repeated memories of the same kind of thing, of a conception, the fixation of a universal. This in turn is the origin from which develops art, in so far as our concern is with becoming, and science, in so far as our concern is with being . The passage from particulars to universals is like the rallying of a routed army through the stand made by one man after another till the whole army has returned to a state of discipline. The transition is made possible by the fact that perception itself has an element of the universal; we perceive a particular thing, it is true, but what we perceive in it is characters which it shares with other things. From this first element of universality we pass without a break through the higher and higher reaches of universality to the highest universals of all, the 'unanalysables.' The passage from particulars to the universals implicit in them is described as induction, the grasping of the universals which become the first premises of science must, we are told, be the work of a faculty higher than science, and this can only be intuitive reason." (ROSS, pp. 52-53)

WRT the Topics: "What distinguishes Aristotle from the sophists, at any rate as they are depicted both by him and by Plato, is that his motive is to aid his hearers and readers not to win either gain or glory by a false appearance of wisdom, but to discuss questions as sensibly as they can be discussed without special knowledge." (ROSS, p. 57)

WRT the SE: "[I]n some of the fallacies ... he has laid his finger on those most important of all fallacies which are not adopted for the deception of others but deceive the speakers themselves [167b35]..." (ROSS, p. 59)

"All natural processes except the motion of the heavenly bodies - the upward and downward movement of the terrestrial elements and their compounds, the growth of plants and animals, qualitative change - have a terminus ad quem at which they naturally come to rest." (ROSS, p. 70) [PSA: is 'rest' analoguous to 'completion'?]

"[F]ire, air, water, earth have all been described as being the nature of things, the eternal stuff of which all other things are passing modifications. Others identify the nature of things with their form as it is stated in their definition, the character which they have when fully developed. This Aristotle holds to be more properly the nature of a thing than its material, since a thing is what it is, has its nature, more fully when it exists actually, when it has attained its form, than when it exists potentially, i.e. when the mere matter for it exists. He habitually identifies nature as power of movement with nature as form. The form or mode of [or?] structure of a thing - e.g. of an animal - is just that by virtue of which it moves, grows, and alters, and comes to rest when it has reached the terminus of its movement. And conversely the power to move, grow, and alter in a certain definite way is just the form or character of each thing." (ROSS, pp. 70-71)

"[I]t is part of the nature of movement that the potential has not yet completely lost its potentiality and become actual; that is the difference between movement and activity. In each moment of activity, potentiality is completely cancelled [?] and transformed into actuality; in movement the transformation is not complete till the movement is over. In other words movement differs from activity as the incomplete from the complete; or, more loosely, movement is incomplete activity and activity is completed movement. Movement cannot be classed simpliciter either as potentiality or as activity. It is an actualisation, but one which implies its own incompleteness and the continued presence of potentiality." (ROSS, pp. 83-84)

"The complete distinction, in respect of character, of origin, and of destiny, between reason and the other faculties of soul is a doctrine to which Aristotle returns in several of his works [e.g. DA III.4-5; Metaphysics 1070a26; EN 1178a22]; though there are other passages in which he seems to aim at maintaining the continuity of reason with sensation [An.Post. II.19; Metaphysics A.I]." (ROSS, p. 125)

"This is as if a woodcarver, when asked what the forces are by which the hand he carves receives its shape, were to say 'by the axe or the auger.' The answer is true but insufficient. 'It is not enough for him to say that by the stroke of his tool this part was formed into a concavity, that into a flat surface; but he must state the reasons why he struck his blow in such a way as to effect this, and what his final object was.' [641a5-14]" (ROSS, pp. 128-129)

"In knowing immaterial forms, mind is one with its object; the whole mind is filled with the whole object [PSA: theoria as awareness], there being nothing in the object which mind cannot apprehend, and no part of the mind that is not occupied with the object; thus in knowing its object mind is knowing itself." (ROSS, p. 151)

"We have seen above that in some sense active reason is 'in the soul', but we are not conscious of it, or are so only in moments of illumination [PSA: i.e., theoria = awareness]." (ROSS, p. 155) 

"Having said that metaphysics will study the first principles of demonstration, Aristotle proceeds to establish the two main principles that underlie all demonstration, 'the common first principles' of the Posterior Analytics - the law of contradiction and that of excluded middle. The former is first expressed in the form 'the same attribute cannot belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect.' This is, it will be observed, stated quite objectively as a law of being. But from it follows a psychological law; to think that the same attribute does and does not belong to the same thing at the same time in the same respect would be to be oneself oppositely qualified at the same time in the same respect, and is therefore impossible.... Men's actions show that they do not think thus. If the same thing is man and not man, on the same principle the same thing is good for a man and not good for him. But no one, if he thinks he ought to do something, proceeds not to do it, on the ground that he also ought not to do it." (ROSS, pp. 166-167) [PSA: cf. FLANNERY] 

"[M]etaphysics will not study those connexions of subject and attribute in which the attribute does not flow from the nature of the subject but is accidental to it. It does not study these, because they are not objects of knowledge at all." (ROSS, p. 170) [PSA: seemingly because episteme explains why, and the accidental comes about in a haphazard way without underlying causes]

"[W]hat we describe abstractly as the essence is, viewed concretely, sometimes a final, sometimes an efficient case. Normally it is a final cause. The reason why this flesh and these bones make a man is that they are informed by the form of man, the human soul; but an answer that goes deeper is the answer 'because they are organised in such a way as to subserve the ends for which man exists, intellectual and moral activity.' In his biology, Aristotle steadily aims at explaining structure by function." (ROSS, pp. 178-179)

"It is not so easy to see what is the work [ergon] of man. Aristotle answers the question by considering what it is that *only* man can do. Growth and reproduction we share with animals and plants, sensation with animals; neither of these can be the characteristic work of man. But in man, as we have learnt from De Anima, there is superimposed on these faculties a higher faculty, which Arisotle here calls to logon echon, 'that which has a plan, or rule.'" (ROSS, p. 199) [PSA: to logon echon could be translated as 'that which provides an account']

"Aristotle's conception of a citizen is widely different from the modern conception, because it is not representative but primary government that he has in view. His citizen is not content to have a say in the choosing of his rulers; every citizen is actually to rule in his turn, and not merely in the sense of being a member of the executive, but in the sense, a more important one for Aristotle, of helping to make the laws of his state; for to the executive is assigned the comparatively small function of supplementing the laws when they are inadequate owing to their generality. It is owing to this lofty conception of a citizen's duties that he so closely narrows the citizen body." (ROSS, p. 256)

WRT Politics V.9, Ross notes: "For the highest offices three things are needed - loyalty to the constitution, administrative capacity, and integrity." [PSA: compare to Rhetoric II.1, where Aristotle discusses the qualities that make a person trusted: good will, good judgment, and good character (in modern terms, benevolence, competence, and integrity)]

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