Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Laval University, 1999.

David Bronstein sheds new light on Aristotle's 'Posterior Analytics' - one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of Western philosophy. He argues that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest - knowledge and learning - and goes on to highlight Plato's influence on Aristotle's text.

This volume collects Late Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval appropriations of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, addressing the logic of inquiry, concept formation, the question whether metaphysics is a science, and the theory of demonstration.

Aristotle's “Posterior Analytics”, Book II, Chapter 19, contains one of the most significant texts in the history of philosophy and, in particular, the field of epistemology. Paolo C. Biondi's book offers a new English translation, along with a commentary and critical analysis, of this important text. The originality of the translation is grounded in the exegesis found in the commentary, which also provides an overview of the interpretations of many Aristotelian philosophers from the Greek commentators through to contemporary scholars. The critical analysis is an in-depth essay on Aristotle's thoughts on logic and psychology. Even though the essay's main argument — that human intuition lies at the base of the mind's grasp of the principles of science — reaffirms the traditional position, the conclusion is arrived at by an ingenious step-by-step study of each of the various human faculties of cognition, a study that is much like the process of putting together the pieces of a puzzle.

The Posterior Analytics (Greek: ????????? ??????; Latin: Analytica Posteriora) is a text from Aristotle’s Organon that deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge. The demonstration is distinguished as a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge, while the definition marked as the statement of a thing’s nature, ... a statement of the meaning of the name, or of an equivalent nominal formula. Aeterna Press

By a thorough study of the Posterior Analytics and related Aristotelian texts, Richard McKirahan reconstructs Aristotle's theory of episteme--science. The Posterior Analytics contains the first extensive treatment of the nature and structure of science in the history of philosophy, and McKirahan's aim is to interpret it sympathetically, following the lead of the text, rather than imposing contemporary frameworks on it. In addition to treating the theory as a whole, the author uses textual and philological as well as philosophical material to interpret many important but difficult individual passages. A number of issues left obscure by the Aristotelian material are settled by reference to Euclid's geometrical practice in the Elements. To justify this use of Euclid, McKirahan makes a comparative analysis of fundamental features of Euclidian geometry with the corresponding elements of Aristotle's theory. Emerging from that discussion is a more precise and more complex picture of the relation between Aristotle's theory and Greek mathematics--a picture of mutual, rather than one-way, dependence. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This collection of essays highlights Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval developments in the discussion of scientific method and argument in the comment(arie)s on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and related methodological passages in the Aristotelian corpus. Despite the importance of these discussions, the larger part of the commentary tradition on the Posterior Analytics still remains uncharted. The contributors to this volume identify and explore three important strands of interpretation, viz. (1) the reception of Aristotle’s logic of inquiry and theory of concept formation in Posterior Analytics II 19; (2) the influence of the Posterior Analytics on the evaluation of metaphysics as a science; and (3) the reception of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration, definition, and causation in Posterior Analytics book II.