Aristotle’s Scientific Knowledge: A Deep Dive
Aristotle’s Scientific Knowledge
Aristotle maintained a consistent concept of science as a fixed, stable, and true form of knowledge. He diverged from Plato’s theory of Forms, focusing instead on particular substances and individuals categorized into three levels: terrestrial, celestial, and divine. He also rejected the concepts of participation and imitation.
Orders of Knowledge
Aristotle distinguished between two orders of knowledge: sensory and intellectual. Sensory knowledge, derived from our senses, is the foundation of all knowledge. However, while true, it is not scientific because it is subject to the movement and change of things, failing to distinguish the substance from the accidental.
Properties of Scientific Knowledge
Scientific knowledge, according to Aristotle, requires fixity, stability, and necessity in its objects to ensure certainty. It possesses the following properties:
- Knowledge of Essence: Understanding the essence of things, answering the question “What is it?” and expressing these essences in definitions.
- Knowledge of Causes: Understanding things through their causes. Knowing that something exists is insufficient; one must understand why it exists.
- Fixed and Immutable: Knowledge must be fixed and unchangeable.
- Necessary Knowledge: Knowing that if something is true, it cannot be otherwise.
Therefore, science can be defined as a fixed, stable, and necessary knowledge of things, derived from their essence, expressed in definitions, and explained by their causes.
The Role of Senses, Imagination, and Understanding
Aristotle situated the material substance of the material world within the realm of science, differentiating between logical and ontological substances. Necessary materials are not ontologically necessary. He emphasized the formation of universal concepts through the senses, imagination, and understanding.
The senses are the primary source of knowledge, connecting us with the world. However, the feelings they transmit are specific and particular, rendering them insufficient for scientific knowledge. These feelings are then processed by the imagination, which centralizes, coordinates, and organizes the resulting images. However, these images still need to be objects of science.
These images are further refined by the understanding, which operates through two functions: the patient intellect and the agent intellect. The agent intellect abstracts by casting light on the image, distinguishing the essence from the material, sensitive, specific, and concrete aspects. This essence is then elevated to the category of an idea, which is then processed by the patient intellect, enabling the act of knowing itself.
Through this theory of abstraction, Aristotle corrects Plato’s idealism and aligns with Socrates’ position. Universal concepts, possessing sufficient universality, firmness, stability, and necessity, become objects of science, mirroring Socrates’ logical reality. There is no need to posit separate worlds; instead, universal concepts are abstracted by the intellect from individual substances, unique and specific to the sensory world, and then elevated to a universal, fixed, and logically necessary form. Thus, universal concepts are founded in re (in reality).
Classification of Sciences
Aristotle classified the sciences as follows:
- Theoretical:
- Physics: Mobile substances inseparable from matter.
- Mathematics: Stationary objects inseparable from matter.
- Theology (Theodicy): Eternal and still substance (God), the paramount science, replacing Plato’s dialectic.
- Practical:
- Politics: City government.
- Economics: Housekeeping.
- Ethics: Direction of individual life.
- Poetics: Medicine, gymnastics, rhetoric, poetics.