Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Posterior Analytics

Translated by G. R. G. Mure

Book II

Chapter 2

These, then, are the four kinds of question we ask, and it is in the answers to these questions that our knowledge consists.

Now when we ask whether a connexion is a fact, or whether a thing without qualification is, we are really asking whether the connexion or the thing has a ‘middle’; and when we have ascertained either that the connexion is a fact or that the thing is – i.e. ascertained either the partial or the unqualified being of the thing – and are proceeding to ask the reason of the connexion or the nature of the thing, then we are asking what the ‘middle’ is.

(By distinguishing the fact of the connexion and the existence of the thing as respectively the partial and the unqualified being of the thing, I mean that if we ask ‘does the moon suffer eclipse?’, or ‘does the moon wax?’, the question concerns a part of the thing’s being; for what we are asking in such questions is whether a thing is this or that, i.e. has or has not this or that attribute: whereas, if we ask whether the moon or night exists, the question concerns the unqualified being of a thing.)

We conclude that in all our inquiries we are asking either whether there is a ‘middle’ or what the ‘middle’ is: for the ‘middle’ here is precisely the cause, and it is the cause that we seek in all our inquiries. Thus, ‘Does the moon suffer eclipse?’ means ‘Is there or is there not a cause producing eclipse of the moon?’, and when we have learnt that there is, our next question is, ‘What, then, is this cause? for the cause through which a thing is – not is this or that, i.e. has this or that attribute, but without qualification is – and the cause through which it is – not is without qualification, but is this or that as having some essential attribute or some accident – are both alike the middle’. By that which is without qualification I mean the subject, e.g. moon or earth or sun or triangle; by that which a subject is (in the partial sense) I mean a property, e.g. eclipse, equality or inequality, interposition or non-interposition. For in all these examples it is clear that the nature of the thing and the reason of the fact are identical: the question ‘What is eclipse?’ and its answer ‘The privation of the moon’s light by the interposition of the earth’ are identical with the question ‘What is the reason of eclipse?’ or ‘Why does the moon suffer eclipse?’ and the reply ‘Because of the failure of light through the earth’s shutting it out’. Again, for ‘What is a concord? A commensurate numerical ratio of a high and a low note’, we may substitute ‘What ratio makes a high and a low note concordant? Their relation according to a commensurate numerical ratio.’ ‘Are the high and the low note concordant?’ is equivalent to ‘Is their ratio commensurate?’; and when we find that it is commensurate, we ask ‘What, then, is their ratio?’.

Cases in which the ‘middle’ is sensible show that the object of our inquiry is always the ‘middle’: we inquire, because we have not perceived it, whether there is or is not a ‘middle’ causing, e.g. an eclipse. On the other hand, if we were on the moon we should not be inquiring either as to the fact or the reason, but both fact and reason would be obvious simultaneously. For the act of perception would have enabled us to know the universal too; since, the present fact of an eclipse being evident, perception would then at the same time give us the present fact of the earth’s screening the sun’s light, and from this would arise the universal.

Thus, as we maintain, to know a thing’s nature is to know the reason why it is; and this is equally true of things in so far as they are said without qualification to be as opposed to being possessed of some attribute, and in so far as they are said to be possessed of some attribute such as equal to right angles, or greater or less.

Book II Chapter 1

Book II Chapter 3