Platonism or Aristotelianism? : a contribution to the history of medicine and science / by Ludwig Edelstein.

  • Edelstein, Ludwig, 1902-1965.
Date:
1940
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Platonism or Aristotelianism? : a contribution to the history of medicine and science / by Ludwig Edelstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    information, living as we do in their midst, and ample data may be collected concerning all their various kinds, if only we are willing to take sufficient pains. Both departments, however, have their special charm. The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions. On the other hand, in certitude and in completeness our knowledge of terrestrial things has the advantage. Moreover, their greater nearness and affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier interest of the heavenly things that are the objects of the higher philosophy.” 19 There are, then, accord¬ ing to Aristotle, two different realms of “ facts,” and though the study of every one of them is interesting and praiseworthy, the value of such studies is incomparable. Such a belief, however, is certainly not similar to that of the disinterested researcher for whom facts are valuable for fact’s sake without any discrimination; it is not like the modern resignation to the world of phenomena beyond which there exists no other, at least none the existence of which can be proved scientifically. Moreover, Aristotle does not “ catalogue ” the facts which he collects;20 the description of facts in his intention is only a preparatory undertaking, either “ natural history, preparatory to natural philosophy, as in the History of Animals preparatory to the De Partibus Animalium, or what we call civil history, preparatory to political philosophy, as in the 158 Constitutions more or less preparatory to the Politics A 21 And the content of natural philosophy or political philosophy? It is the investigation of causes in which the formal cause proves to be the essential one as compared with the material conditions. In fact form, although it is recognized a posteriori, exists prior to matter; truly scientific research proceeds in syllogisms, in deductions, from the determining principles to the 19 De Partibus Animalium, I, 5, 644b 22 ff. (The works of Aristotle translated into English [W. Ogle], V, 1912, Oxford.) 30 Contrary to Shorey, loc. cit., p. 163, who besides reduces the difference of interest in facts as shown by Aristotle and Plato to the difference between the mathematician and the biologist “ who naturally collects more little facts ”; but cf. above p. 761. 21 Case, loc. cit., p. 521b.