The Aristotle Project

One of the things that the ontologist must study and which is assumed by the other special sciences are the "Great Kinds": Being, Unity, Contraries, Similarities, etc. All the special sciences must use them but none can really study them while remaining in their own field. Once again this field lies within what we now call "ontology".

In this episode Adam and Ada talk about what subject matter is studied in order to "know everything", i.e. learn *first* philosophy. How can you do this with out just studying all the special sciences? The answer lies in the strange phrase "being *qua* being". It's not that different from what philosophers, programmers and cognitive scientists call "ontology".

In the final chapter of Book A, Aristotle gives us some foreshadowing of how he will build on previous science and philosophy with supreme science with perhaps less dictatorial powers than that of Plato's philosopher kings but a more valid claim to certainty.

In this episode we review Aristotle's criticism of his predecessors and teacher, both materialist and idealist, staking out a middle ground between them.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)In chapter six, Aristotle discusses and his teacher, Plato, perhaps the only philosopher who is more famous than he. Plato extended the basic ideas of Pythagoras beyond physics, engineering and art by positing Forms or Ideas as a "Substance" more real than matter or visible beings.Mathematicians, poets, saints, and dictators have all found Plato to be their teacher, and so any interpretation of him will be relevant, never more so than one by his greatest student, Aristotle.

In contrast to the Naturalists who saw matter as the Ultimate Cause, other ancient thinkers preferred Numbers. Chief among these were the followers of Pythagoras. Math was such a new and powerful in this age that is almost seemed like magic. Aristotle takes these people seriously and his views are relevant to those debated today, when exotic forms of math are still just as mysterious as Euclid was then.

In this episode. Adam and Ada look at ancient natural science, which focused on matter and energy as the "Arkhe", or primary cause. We review Aristotle's treatment of Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Atomism and Empedocles.

In this conversation Ada and Adam discuss the idea of how some knowledge is "deeper", "higher", or "wider" than another, especially the science of first philosophy which Aristotle claims is deeper or more primary than natural science, math or any other science. Our text will be chapter 2 of Metaphysics Book A.

The first episode of our first series, wherein Adam and Ada Voight discuss Aristotle's introduction the the fundamental problems of knowledge, reality, life, and the good. We are discussing chapter 1 of Book I of the "Metaphysics".If you have not read our text, don't worry, neither did Ada, but we still learned a lot and had fun. In fact, one of Aristotle's main topics is how good and enjoyable learning is, and how learning EVERYTHING all at once (i.e. the study of "Wisdom") is the best of all.