Is Aristotle's biology a posterior analytics science?

• Grant number: 06/53812-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2006
• End date: March 31, 2008
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antônio de Ávila Zingano
• Grantee: Barbara Botter
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 05/58322-7 - The philosophy of Aristotle, AP.TEM

Abstract

Aristotle was the first Greek thinker to articulate a taxonomy of scientific pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical, practical, productive areas of knowledge and a rigorous theory of explanatory proof. He characterizes the scientific understanding of facts and different sorts of inquiry in order to count as a theoretical science. A number of questions arise when we turn to the treatises of biology and zoology, because it's difficult to understand if there is a conflict between the account of scientific explanation in the Posterior Analytics and the investigations reported in treatises such as the Historia Animalium, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals. In my research program I want to show that there are affinities between the theory of explanation in the Posterior Analytics and the zoological treatises and I want to study the nature and the extent of this relationship. I think that the apparent chaos in Historia Animalium is dissipated when the Aristotelian science of nature is viewed within the logic of division found in Analytics; I think that Partibus Animalium was intentionally written to answer the question of how the Analytics model of science is to apply to Aristotle's biology, and the comparison of the role assigned to definition in the Analytics and in the biological works will shows the influence of Analytics on Generation of Animals. In my opinion it is implausible that a philosopher as systematic as Aristotle could formulate the first theory of scientific demonstration, pepper the Organon with biological examples, and not aim to structure his science of animal in accordance with that theory. (AU)