Science, Metaphysics, Philosophy: In Search of A Distinction

2020

In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle articulates a theory of 'science' (epistēmē) according to which each science is organized around certain indemonstrable principles (archai) concerning the kinds studied by that science. The most prominent of the three types of principles discussed by Aristotle are definitions (horismoi). In this dissertation, I clarify Aristotle's account of how we can come to know what the definition of a kind is. I examine three existing interpretations of Aristotle's views on this issue, namely, the Intuitionist Interpretation (defended by Frede, Irwin, and Ross), the Explanationist Interpretation (defended by Bolton, Charles, and Lennox), and the Socratic Interpretation (defended by Bronstein). I argue that the Explanationist Interpretation is superior to its competitors. In doing so, I provide new arguments against the Intuitionist Interpretation and a serious challenge to the Socratic Interpretation, addressing in particular the as of yet u...

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2016

Metascience, 2013

Theory and Practice in Aristotle's Natural Science, 2015

Aristotle argued that in theory one could acquire knowledge of the natural world. But he did not simply provide a theoretical account of how to do this; he put his theories into practice. This volume shows how Aristotle’s natural science and philosophical theories shed light on one another. The contributors engage with Aristotle’s biological and non-biological scientific works and with a wide variety of his theoretical works, including Physics, Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, and Posterior Analytics. The chapters focus on a number of themes, including the sort of explanation provided by matter; the relationship between matter, teleology, and necessity; cosmic teleology; how an organism’s soul and faculties relate to its end; how to define things such as sleep, void, and soul; and the proper way to make scientific judgments. The resulting volume offers a rich and integrated view of Aristotle’s science and shows how it fits with his larger philosophical theories.

2011

Ancient Philosophy, 2012

Mariska Leunissen's study focuses on teleology in Aristotle's theory and practice of science. She proceeds from Aristotle's general defense of teleology (chapter 1) to a more detailed discussion of how teleology works in the science of soul (chapter 2), of animal parts (chapter 4), and of cosmology (chapter 5). She also argues that Aristotle's study of animal parts is a demonstrative science, in accordance with the model of the Posterior Analytics (chapter 3). In the brilliant final chapter 6, Leunissen argues for a new view of how final causes figure in scientific syllogisms: not as middle terms but as major terms that are the predicates of the conclusions of scientific demonstrations. The middle terms then pick out the causal features that bring about the final cause. The book is of outstanding quality. The level of scholarship is very high, the solutions convincing and well argued, and the whole engaging. The highlights, I find, are Leunissen's distinction between primary and secondary teleology and her discussion of the final cause in scientific syllogisms. The former enables her, among other things, to give a more independent role to material necessity than has previously been argued, while at the same time preserving its compatibility with teleology: not all material necessity is subordinated to teleology, but rather on its own it produces residue-selected and retained teleologically by nature-from which nature then produces functional animal parts. Such parts are not strictly necessary for the animal's substantial being and are thus not conditionally necessary, but they have a function and serve the animal's good. By means of the latter, Leunissen manages to integrate Aristotle's examples of teleological explanation and inquiry into his theory of scientific demonstration. One of the general conclusions of the study is that biology, not mathematics, was Aristotle's central model for science and that his scientific practice in fact follows his theory: the practice is more rigorous in searching for patterns of teleological explanation realized through material, efficient, and formal causes, and the theory more flexible than has often been supposed. Leunissen's discussion operates with a distinction between cause and explanation, briefly commented on at the beginning of chapter 1 (10, n. 2). In that context, correctly taking Aristotle as a realist concerning both cause and explanation, Leunissen contends that the answers given to "why" questions will be explanatory and hence productive of scientific knowledge "if they pick out real causes." She argues that whereas teleology for Aristotle enjoys explanatory priority, other cause-types are causally prior. One might then ask whether such a distinction between explanatory and causal priority coincides with Aristotle's distinction between what is prior to us and prior in nature. Leunissen's conclusion offers a closer account of cause and explanation and a partially affirmative answer. The view that final causes occur in the conclusions of demonstrations is coupled with their being "closer to us" (211), that is, better known to us in Aristotle's distinction. Therefore, final causes provide us with starting points for the discovery of causally prior factors, that is, the middle terms of scientific demonstrations that are further away from us and hence, supposedly, better known in nature. However, ends and functions are also identified as being "prior in nature," whereas formal, efficient, and material causes are prior in generation (214). This indicates that the correspondence with Aristotle's distinction is not quite complete.

The presented text focuses rather on enabling access to philosophical aspects and ideological residuals found in several scientific approaches and issues. It means, analyses of conceptual schemes but also of phenomena present in their implicitly perceived background are to be dealt with. It is essays on science, its roots, and essence but also on relations of science and philosophy and also on heritage which philosophers left in science that I thematize. And it is in this sense that the presented text represents a textbook. It should try to teach how to comprehend explanatory bases and limits of philosophical and scientific knowledge but also to view things creatively, in other than a traditional way. Its task is to make bases complicated and surmise boundaries, and also to find creatively inspirations and new possible outcomes. The text is a philosophical essay (in the original sense of this word: an examination, (re)consideration, experiment). It is an attempt to ponder on a nature of sciences, methods and procedures, evidences and also on axioms and explanatory bases, but at the same time it represents an attempt to assess them. From this viewpoint, it rather complicates issues than provides answers to them and that is what the author’s intention aspires to: to induce students not to take things for granted and to try to view the world differently from the way they perceived it before. A vision of the world, clarity, looking at and thematizing of an issue which represents amatter of course (and thus which is frequently implicit and beyond doubt), noticing of an issue scientists and philosophers thought and did not thought about, but also why they believed in what they believed that is what represents the main object of the presented research.

Science & Education, 2009

The paper examines the fortunes of Aristotelian metaphysics in science and the philosophy of science. It considers the Enlightenment claim that such a metaphysics is fundamentally unscientific, and that its abandonment was essential to the scientific revolution. The history of the scientific revolution and the metaphysical debates involved in it is examined, and it is argued that the eclipse of Aristotelian views was neither complete, nor merited. The evolution of Humeian and positivist accounts of science is described, and it is shown how the severe problems with these accounts, together with a revival of Aristotelian concepts in philosophy, have led to the rebirth of broadly Aristotelian accounts of the metaphysics underlying science.

Apeiron. Volume 46, Issue 2, Pages 85–105, ISSN (Online) 2156-7093, ISSN (Print) 0003-6390, DOI: 10.1515/apeiron-2011-0008, April 2013 If you need access contact me.

2011

This paper investigates the theme of Teleology, as it has been used through the history of human thought, especially since the development of the scientific theories about Nature. It begins with most current definitions of Teleology and their uses. Then, the historical background comes into consideration, by starting with Aristotle’s teleological (or finalistic) explanation, to the incorporation of teleological approach in early and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. Kant’s and Hegel’s perspectives of teleology, in Modern Age, are briefly revised. Finally, a study of the “philosophical teleological approach” in human and social science’s Epistemology was focused in Marx’s, Weber’s and Habermas’ ideas. The paper ends with a proposition of arguments about how these themes are relevant for the Environmental Science, wherein the study of Physics, Biology and Human systems are practiced with nuances and uses of teleological concepts.