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The Aristotle Adventure: A Guide to the Greek, Arabic, & Latin Scholars Who Transmitted Aristotle's Logic to the Renaissance

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Burgess Laughlin's *The Aristotle Adventure* provides an interesting and enlightening account of the transmission of Aristotle's treatises on logic. From ancient Greece, to the Arabian Peninsula and the European Continent, this book details the philosophical transmission of Aristotle's Organon, which laid the foundations for western intellectual and scientific thinking. The writing style is clear and concise, provides impressive detail and is extremely well referenced for further study. This book is a gem for anyone interested in the transmission of the fundamental ideas which gave rise to western civilization.

Just finished reading this superb book. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in the power and the history of ideas--and the fragility of good ones.

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
The desire to understand is intrinsic in human beings, it is in our nature. Philosophy is ultimate consequence of desire. Our desires have many aspects such as, food, sex, etc. Curiosity is natural in humans, we see it especially in small kids, and it comes from within us. Philosophy caps off curiosity and wonder. Aporia = "blocking," something is blocking our wondering as a disturbance and then we struggle to break through with wonder to find the answer. Breaking through aporia can't just be forced but must come from things known. Aristotle always begins his inquiries with the familiar. Difference between Plato and Aristotle, dialogues use aporia but leave unanswered questions, Aristotle says if you try hard you can break thru aporia and get at an answer.

Pursuit of knowledge begins with wonder, breaks thru aporia and satisfies the mind getting to a position of achievement, the goal of knowledge is to eliminate wonder. Faculty of nous is that part of the mind that grasps first principles "First Principles- nous=understanding, demonstration = episteme Dialectic, arche =beginning or rule. Aristotle has a preference for discovering first principles. For Aristotle, one has to start with first principles to proceed to knowledge. These first principles are not just the beginning, but that they govern or rule the procedure for gaining knowledge. Aristotle does not believe humans have these first principles of knowledge innately as Plato believed. Plato thinks knowledge is in the "soul" and innate in humans we just need to find a way to re-learn it.

Potential-Actual Aristotle says we have potential like kids having the capacity to learn language at a young age. For Aristotle, potential for knowledge is innate prior to achieving knowledge.
The "innately" is a swipe at Plato who is similar to Descartes and Liebnitz. Aristotle denies this, nothing is known, it is learned. Even animals have memory. Memory retains perceptions. However, only humans have Logos="reason" and "language." Experience occurs after perception and memory. From our experiences, we get a principle of science. The process of experience arises into the "soul" which then becomes a principle. This all leads to what we know by "induction."

Induction=out of a particular experiences we get a universal. Example, gravity = apple "always" falls. The "always" is the universal principle like Newton's laws. However, sometimes inductions are questionable. Nous=understanding and first principles. "Necessary Knowledge" like 2+2=4. "Contingent knowledge" is of experiences, which might go through variations. Example, how many dogs are in the backyard? Answer, it actually depends on time of day you ask. It means it can change. The goal is to satisfy our desire to know.

The difference of induction for Plato and Aristotle is "this is a horse." "This" is the particular horse is the universal. Plato believed that basic principles and concepts were already in the mind, humans just have to simply access them. Aristotle disagrees he argues that the concept of horse is an organizing principle that humans can use to understand horses when they confront them; he agrees they will be abstract and different from the particular from the horses they actually encounter. What he disagrees with Plato on is how we get the concept. Aristotle says we have to build the concept of "horse" with a classification system; it is not innate in us, as Plato would argue.

Aristotle came up with up with a classification system. Classification=a name for an object. To get a name you look at composition=what makes things the same, division=how things are different (legs, scales). Aristotle says we do this from experience and observation, memory etc. Concept of "horse" is an organizing principle. This is all induction! Therefore, nous doesn't name anything, it is an arbitrary tag. Aristotle wants a universal concept of knowledge that holds this is a difference with Plato. Key concept- Aristotle says language and reality is two sides of the same coin. Logos originally meant speech. Humans access the world through language according to Aristotle. He believes we were built for speech.

A typical deductive syllogism is "If Socrates is human, and all humans are mortal, then Socrates is mortal." Thus if A=B and B=C, then A=C. Deduction begins with a general principle and move to a specific. Induction leads us to general principle then we use deduction to get to answer or deductive claims. Dialectic=finding first principles through testing them out or using dialogue or debate as in Plato. Thus, we contend with differing beliefs to arrive at first principle.

Important idea--Aristotle and distinction between the "many and the wise." This is subject matter of inquiry or dialectic. The "wise" means people with certain understanding. The "many" means we all understand or know such as, "common sense." Aristotle thinks it is important that when we inquirer we start from the many and then move to the wise in our search for answers. We must always consult both. Plato and Socrates never look to the many. Aristotle says whatever the truth is it can't be so unusual as to leave the rest of human beliefs behind. Example is he doesn't buy Zeno's paradox. In addition, the truth can't be so common as to be able to only have to survey the masses. Sometimes, what most people believe needs help. Example, we all think the best sort of life for us is pleasure; we need the wise to guide us and show it is contemplation.

We begin with questions; knowledge seeks to answer these questions. If we want to know what something is, we already have a sense of the difference of what Plato gave. In a nutshell, what Plato said was that the horse that we encounter is an image of an eternal form "horseness." This is a top down concept. Aristotle's answer is that the particular horse we experience is understood by way of organizing and classifying our perceptions and experiences into a whole. This bottom up approach is a classic distinction that finds itself in many different traditions of philosophy. Aristotle does not have Plato's dualistic two worlds. The eternal world of the forms and then the world of material experience. Whatever the universal is, it is found directly in things through experience, not by rising above to the eternal world of the forms.

Unity-every form of knowledge has some kind of unification, this is how we gather our experiences. If we couldn't gather our experiences into some kind of unity that would hold, then every time we would seek to understand something we would have to start over. We would have to continually deal with differences and variations. Therefore, when we know that, that is a horse, that idea, concept of horse has organized our experiences in a way that it gathers it together. Then the term horse names that unity and then rests in the soul and enables us to go out into the world already armed with some gathered sense of things. Therefore, the next time we confront a horse we already know what it is.

There are different levels of unity for Aristotle, such as, Numerical unity things identical to itself, i.e. two apples and two dogs are equally two. Our experiences teach us this. Therefore, "this" horse is a unity and a singular phenomena. Then, there is unity that would occupy the same genus and same species. Classic definition of humans for Aristotle is- "rational animal." Animal =genus, rational=species. Unity by analogy- a difference that brings something together, like "war on drugs." Aristotle preferred things that were unified in a very exact comprehensive way. So, to classify humans as rational animals is decisive because it captures a general feature and a specific feature in such a way that you are always going to know what humans are by way of that classification.

Aristotle recognizes analogies are looser but sometimes performs the function of unifying our experience by bringing things together in some way, however that unification is not going to be exact, decisive full or complete. He prefers demonstration like deduction; it is amore precise form of knowledge and provides so much knowledge. When he talks about logic, which he invented, and he gets into particular investigations like biology he had to confess things are not always exact in nature. Thus, few things are really universal. However, more often in the world we use unity by analogy than unity by numerical, or genus, etc. Remember the "this" is a horse, for Plato, the true object of knowledge was "horseness" not the "this." The "this is a particular limited perceived instance of the super form of horseness. Therefore, what has true being for Plato is the eternal form of horse. The particular horse the "this" does not have absolute true being because it is limited, it is particular, and it comes and goes. Aristotle turns the tables. The true meaning of "being" the question of what does it mean to be something is always a "this." It is not some transcendent form in eternal realm; it is always the particular thing you encounter.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.