I argue that these inconsistencies in wording and practice reflect the existence of two distinct Aristotelian views of inquiry, one peculiar to the Posterior Analytics and the other put forward in the Physics and practiced in the Physics and in other treatises. Although the two views overlap to some degree (e.g. both regard a rudimentary understanding of the subject as an essential first stage), the view of the syllogism as the workhorse of scientific investigation and the related view of inquiry (...) as a search for the ‘missing middle terms’ turn out to be ideas peculiar to the Analytics. Conversely, the techniques of analysis and differentiation highlighted in the Physics account receive only cursory attention in the Analytics. However, when we consider the character of Aristotle’s own inquiries, on both scientific and philosophical topics, it becomes clear that it is the Physics rather than the Posterior Analytics that gives us Aristotle’s considered view the path to knowledge. (shrink)

Abduction* is the genus with deduction and induction as species. Modus tollens is backward reasoning as an unknown proposition is inferred from a known proposition. Reductio ad absurdum is abductive because the conclusion is inferred by deriving a contradiction from an assumption. Inductive reasoning from effect to cause is also backward reasoning. But abduction* consists of forward reasoning as well. The generic structure of abductive* argumentation is universal among all cultures, occupations and disciplines.

Proposes a new way of understanding the nature of metaphysics, focusing on nonreductionist emergence theory, both in ancient and modern philosophy, as well as in contemporary philosophy of science.

C. Lévi-Strauss advirtió que la variedad de mitos, lejos de constituir una proliferación anárquica de relatos, exhibe un aire de familia que trasparenta la profunda unidad del pensamiento humano. A partir de esta idea, el artículo muestra cómo ciertas teorías filosóficas y científicas sobre el origen del cosmos se apoyan en una estructura narrativa implícita en los mitos cosmogónicos. Esta comparación evidencia inesperadas afinidades en el intento por responder la pregunta por el origen del cosmos. C. Lévi-Strauss showed that -far (...) from constituting an anarchic proliferation of narratives- the variety of myths exhibits a familiarity which makes the deep unity of human thought transparent. Taking this idea as starting point, the article shows how certain philosophical and scientific theories regarding the origin of the cosmos rest on an implicit narrative structure found in the cosmogonic myths. This comparison makes evident some unexpected affinities found in the attempt to answer the question regarding the origin of the cosmos. (shrink)

The notion of the heart is one of the most basic notions in ordinary language. It is central to Heidegger’s notion of thought that he relates to the primordial word Gedanc as underlying attunement that issues forth in emotional phenomena. He plays with all the etymological cognates of that word to zero in on the phenomena involved. The key experience of Erstaunen that grounds the first beginning of philosophy is paralleled by Erschrecken that grounds Heidegger’s “second beginning” and plays counterpoint (...) with the first. Along with Befindlichkeit as one’s basic attunement, these are key phenomena that belong to the heart, not to ‘intellect’ or ‘will.’ Thinking in terms of the intellect is das rechnende Denken¸ thinking in terms of the heart, besinnliche Nachdenken. It is the latter that provides the “poetic-intellectual” experience for both the arts and philosophy in which such “world space” is created that even the ordinary appears extraordinary. (shrink)

With respect to Parmenides’ thought Melissus was regarded as a dissident thinker already in antiquity. His polemical introduction of the concept of void and the relative idea of infinite Being seemed particularly controversial. The aim of the present paper is to examine the origins of the Melissian understanding of void in order to trace its philosophical genesis to the criticism of the Atomist Leucippus. According to the philosopher from Abdera, the Eleatic fundamental principles had to conform to the obviousness of (...) bodies’ motion, which is why the Eleatic not-Being had to be understood as void. Melissus took issue with this view and criticized the idea of the void’s reality by means of a methodical argument. In the course of doing so, the philosopher from Samos distorted the original Parmenidean ontology, which is why his theories were often criticized severely as theoretically weak. (shrink)

A paradox is usually described as an apparently false statement supported by an apparently good argument which departs from premises that most people would find trivially true. This survey article presents a brief overview of three different contemporary perspectives on paradoxes. According to the epistemic view, paradoxes play a crucial role in the progress of science and cannot be regarded as sound proofs of a false statement. According to the dialetheist view, the conclusion of some paradoxical reasonings is both, true (...) and false, what means that there must be some true contradictions. Finally, the mystic view understands recalcitrant paradoxes as unsolvable problems which show the limits of human thought and cognition. The last section of this paper focuses on the paradoxes of self-reference, a family of paradoxes which have had a deep impact in the development of science during the twentieth century. Keywords: paradox, veridic paradox, falsidic paradox, antinomy, dialetheism, selfreference, circularity, inclosure schema. (shrink)

The paper demonstrates that Parmenides’ monism is a logical consequence of his criteria for philosophy, in conjunction with the logical operators he uses, and their holistic connection. Parmenides, I argue, is the first philosopher to set out explicit criteria for philosophy, establishing as criterion not only consistency, but also what I call rational admissibility, the requirement when giving an account of something that the account be based on rational analysis and can withstand rational scrutiny. I give a detailed account of (...) the logical operators Parmenides uses in his argument and of the way in which his notion of being is tailored to fit both them and his criteria for philoso-phy. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on Xenophanes’ criticism of anthropomorphic representation of the gods, famously sounding like a declaration of war against a constituent part of the Greek religion, and adopting terms and a tone that are unequalled amongst “pre-Socratic” authors for their directness and explicitness. While the main features of Xenophanes’ polemic are well known thanks to some of the most studied fragments of the pre-Socratic tradition, a different line of enquiry from the usual one is attempted by (...) considering the multi-layered background of the religious beliefs revolving around the idea that the gods have human form as outlined in the tradition of epic poetry or represented in cult statues: in the light of this consideration Xenophanes’ text can take on some new characteristics. In the second part of the article, emphasis is put on the importance of the correlation Xenophanes established between the issue of the appearance of the gods and that of the certainty of knowledge, in terms that have exerted tremendous influence on later thought, most notably on Plato in the Timaeus. (shrink)

The paper starts with reflections on Plato’s critique of the poets and the preference many express for Aristotle’s view of poetry. The second part of the paper takes a case study of analytic treatments of ancient philosophy, including the ancient philosopher poets, to examine the poetics of analytic philosophy, diagnosing a preference in Analytic philosophy for a clean non-poetic style of presentation, and then develops this in considering how well historians of philosophy in the Analytic tradition can accommodate the contributions (...) of philosophers who wrote in verse. The final part of the paper reviews the current enthusiasm for decoding Empedocles’ vague and poetic descriptions of the cosmic cycle into a precise scientific periodicity on the basis of the recently discovered Byzantine scholia on Aristotle. I argue that this enthusiasm speaks to a desire for definite and clear numerical values in place of poetic motifs of give and take, and that this mathematical and scientific poetic is comparable to the preferred poetic of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The extraordinary overall textual situation of Parmenides’ B1,1-3, due to complex, variegate and polymorphous causes, entailed and still entails diverse sorts of problematic issues so to constitute a true labyrinth of philological, hermeneutical and theoretical instances interwoven each other in almost inextricable way. In this analysis, a first substantial knot of philological type resulted necessary to a preliminary discrimination for making sure the textual reconstruction in order to argue then its most literarily clear and specifiable meaning. In this way it (...) was also possible to make sure its semantic and theoretical relevancies. This research leaded to outline and, hopefully, to demonstrate no textual corruption and following misunderstanding happened before sec. XIII, namely corresponding to the lecture present in the first available manuscript, the so-called cod. N, universally excluded and entirely misevaluated, even discarded; instead it is not only the principle, but the unique reliable codex. The detailed analyse including the autoptic exam is the result of enlightening the absolute goodness of this version and the reasons both philological and hermeneutical comparations, which allow to achieve its complete textual rehabilitation and so to grasp its real conceptual content. (shrink)

From the older handbooks to the more recent scholarly literature, Gorgias's professions about his art are taken literally at their word: conjured up in all of these accounts is the image of a hearer irresistibly overwhelmed by Gorgias's apagogic and psychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of his art, in effect, replaces our description of it. "His proofs... give the impression of ineluctability" . "Thus logos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do its will" . "Incurably (...) deceptive," logos has an "enormous power" that acts upon opinion, which is "easy to change" . Surprisingly, the urge to describe or paraphrase Gorgias's art has caused commentators to overlook the very best witness of it that we have: its enactment, which is to say the performative value of Gorgias's writings, especially the speeches. For if Gorgias's literary remains do nothing else, they demonstrate how one can do things with words without being explicit about what is being done, even if this means contradicting, performatively, what is being said-as for instance in his statements, so unconvincingly made, about the ostensible aims of rhetoric. Was Gorgias persuasive in practice? Was persuasion even the goal? Is logos the solitary arbiter of reality that it is so often made out to be? Through close examination of Gorgias's Helen and parts of On Not-Being, I attempt to show that persuasion is manifestly not the goal of his arguments, which in the first instance are aporetic paradoxes that expose the difficulties of defining the nature of either language or reality, and which in the last instance are instruments of cultural demystification. The only deception at work in Gorgias's writings is that of the self-deception of their audience. It is this that gives these curiously revealing documents of fifth-century Greek culture their "dissuasive," not persuasive, character. (shrink)

This paper discusses the theoretical relationship between the views of Damascius and those of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. While Damascius’ De principiis is a bold treatise devoted to investigating the hypermetaphysics of apophatism, it anticipates various theoretical positions put forward by Dionysius the Areopagite. The present paper focuses on the following. First, Damascius is the only ancient philoso­pher who systematically demonstrates the first principle to be infinite. Second, Damascius modifies the concept and in several important passages shows the infinite to be (...) superior and prior to the finite. Third, Damascius’ theory of being is the strongest ancient articulation of the nature of the One which is a clear prefiguration of the negative theology developed by Dionysius the Areopagite. (shrink)

Reaching understanding is one of our central epistemic goals, dictated by our important motivational epistemic virtue, namely inquisitiveness about the way things hang together. Understanding of humanly important causal dependencies is also the basic factual-theoretic ingredient of wisdom on the anthropocentric view proposed in the article. It appears at two levels. At the first level of immediate, spontaneous wisdom, it is paired with practical knowledge and motivation ( phronesis ), and encompasses understanding of oneself (a distinct level of self-knowledge having (...) to do with one’s dispositions capacities, vulnerabilities, and ways of reacting), of other people, of possibilities of meaningful life, and of relevant courses of events. It is partly resistant to skeptical scenarios, but not completely. On the second and reflective level, understanding helps fuller holistic integration of one’s first order practical and factual-theoretic knowledge and motivation, thus minimizing potential and actual conflicts between all these components. It also participates in the reflective control whose exercise is needed for full reflective wisdom, the crucial epistemic-practical virtue or human excellence. (shrink)

In the "Doxographi Graeci" the preferred short heading of Aët. 2.31 (Greek text below, p. 28) is 'On Distances', though ps.Plutarch has a long heading. This chapter is about the distances of the sun and moon from each other and from the earth (lemmas 1 to 3, in both ps.Plutarch and Stobaeus), and of the real or apparent shape of the heaven relative to its distance from the earth (lemmas 4 and 5, Stobaeus only). Parallels from Ioann. Lydus and Theodoret (...) for what is in ps.Plutarch are given by Diels in apparatu. To the best of my knowledge it has not been noticed that a version of ps.Plutarch's text is preserved in a scholium on the "Almagest", which constitutes our earliest evidence for the text. The correctness of Diels' reconstruction is questionable. Though certainty, naturally, is beyond our reach it is quite possible that these two sets of lemmas represent two distinct Aëtian (or proto-Aëtian) chapters. These may have been coalesced by Stobaeus (or Aëtius), while ps.Plutarch abridged the second (or the two final lemmas) away. These considerations necessitate an inquiry into the parallels that are available, including material from an introduction to Aratus. The vexing question of short versus long(er) chapter headings is also relevant in this context. Furthermore, the contrasting views regarding cosmic distances are not only a feature of the Placita literature with a distant origin in Aristotle, but also, apparently, of the commentary literature on Plato's "Timaeus". Arguably in a passage in Plutarch's "De facie" these two traditions intersect. Finally, a case can be made out for Eudemus not Theophrastus as an intermediary source of Presocratic astronomical data in the Placita. (shrink)

‘Water is H2O’ is one of the most frequently cited sentences in analytic philosophy, thanks to the seminal work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam in the 1970s on the semantics of natural kind terms. Both of these philosophers owe an intellectual debt to the empiricist metaphysics of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, while disagreeing profoundly with Locke about the reality of natural kinds. Locke employs an intriguing example involving water to support his view that kinds (or ‘species’), such (...) as water and gold, are the workmanship of the human mind. This is the point of his story about a winter visitor to England from Jamaica, who is astonished to find that the water in his basin has turned solid overnight, and proceeds to call it ‘hardened water’. Locke criticizes this judgement, maintaining that it is more consonant with common sense to regard water and ice as different kinds of substance. Putnam, by implication, disagrees. Deploying his imaginary example of Twin Earth—a distant planet where a watery-looking substance, XYZ, rather than H2O, fills the oceans and rivers—he maintains that common sense supports the judgement that XYZ and H2O, despite their superficial similarity, are not the same kind of substance, precisely because their molecular compositions are different. Here it will be argued that both views are mistaken, but that, in this dispute, Locke has more right on his side than his modern opponents do. (shrink)

This paper considers whether incompatibilism, the view that negation is to be explained in terms of a primitive notion of incompatibility, and Fregeanism, the view that arithmetical truths are analytic according to Frege’s definition of that term in §3 of Foundations of Arithmetic, can both be upheld simultaneously. Both views are attractive on their own right, in particular for a certain empiricist mind-set. They promise to account for two philosophical puzzling phenomena: the problem of negative truth and the problem of (...) epistemic access to numbers. For an incompatibilist, proofs of numerical non-identities must appeal to primitive incompatibilities. I argue that no analytic primitive incompatibilities are forthcoming. Hence incompatibilists cannot be Fregeans. (shrink)

This study focuses on the origin of life as presented in the thought of Anaximander of Miletus but also points to some parallel motifs found in much later conceptions of both the pre-Darwinian German romantic science and post-Darwinian biology. According to Anaximander, life originated in the moisture associated with earth (mud). This moist environment hosted the first living creatures that later populated the dry land. In these descriptions, one can trace the earliest hints of the notion of environmental adaptation. The (...) origin of humans was seen as connected in some way with fish: ancient humans were supposed to have developed inside fish-like animals. Anaximander took into account changes in the development of living creatures (adaptations) and speculated on the origins of humans. Similar ideas are found also in the writings of much later, eighteenth and nineteenth century authors who were close to the tradition of German romantic science. We do not argue that these later concepts are in any way directly linked with those of the pre-Socratics, but they show surprising parallels in, e.g., the hypothesis that life originated in a moist environment or the supposition that human developed from fish-like ancestors. These transformations are seen as a consequence of timeless logic rather than as evolution in historical terms. Despite the accent on the origin of living things, both Anaximander and the later Naturphilosophen lack in their notions the element most characteristic of Darwin’s thought, that is, the emphasis on historicity and uniqueness of all that comes into being. (shrink)

The verb ‘to know’ can be used both in ascriptions of propositional knowledge and ascriptions of knowledge of acquaintance. In the formal epistemology literature, the former use of ‘know’ has attracted considerable attention, while the latter is typically regarded as derivative. This attitude may be unsatisfactory for those philosophers who, like Russell, are not willing to think of knowledge of acquaintance as a subsidiary or dependent kind of knowledge. In this paper we outline a logic of knowledge of acquaintance in (...) which ascriptions like ‘Mary knows Smith’ are regarded as formally interesting in their own right, remaining neutral on their relation to ascriptions of propositional knowledge. The resulting logical framework, which is based on Hintikka’s modal approach to epistemic logic, provides a fresh perspective on various issues and notions at play in the philosophical debate on acquaintance. (shrink)

It is perhaps time to revivify our other name in Greek: phos. For although the Greeks named us anthrôpos, they also called us phos. And the Greeks used the word phos because we are like light. Indeed, our way of being light-like is illuminating, which illuminates being and the truth of being, so that it can be thought and said, imagined, and sensed—especially insofar as we are this illumination. Thus, it is time to reclaim phos as our name and so (...) rethink what it means to illuminate, whether we light up everything that is, as well as ourselves, or not. (shrink)

Literary pneuma is a foundational idea in Chinese literary thought and the theory of literary pneuma one of the major aesthetic theories in Chinese literature and art. Since its first appearance, however, this aesthetic has remained an elusive concept despite its central importance. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine major statements of wenqi in Chinese thought in relation to similar ideas in modern philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. It attempts to understand its rationale, locate its conceptual groundings, (...) and reconceptualize it into an aesthetic theory for our time. (shrink)

Chinese culture is distinguished among the world’s other great traditions by the depth and intensity of its love for rock and stone. This enduring passion manifests itself both in the art of garden making, where rocks form the frame and the central focus of the classical Chinese garden, and also on a smaller scale, in the practice of collecting stones to be displayed on trays or on scholars’ desks indoors. This essay sketches a brief history of lithophilia in China, then (...) adduces the most important philosophical presuppositions for it, and concludes by suggesting some implications for our experience of, and interactions with, the realm of stone and rock. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es discutir la interpretación tradicional según la cual los razonamientos de Zenón de Elea en contra de la multiplicidad constituyen una defensa de la tesis monista. Intentaré demostrar que las objeciones zenonianas a la multiplicidad suponen una critica previa a la existencia de "lo uno". Por este motivo, Zenón no es monista ni pluralista, sino, más bien, un crítico de las perspectivas metafísicas que consideran al ser en términos numéricos, i. e. como uno o como (...) múltiple. Para ello me concentraré en el análisis de la interpretación que Aristóteles desarrolla sobre la filosofía de Zenón, considerando algunos pasajes de Física, Refutaciones sofísticas y, fundamentalmente, Metafísica, III. 4. 1001b7-13. También incluiré algunos testimonios del comentario a la Física de Simplicio, en los que se discuten las interpretaciones de Eudemo de Rodas y Alejandro de Afrodisia, que ratifican el punto de vista aristotélico sobre la filosofía de Zenón. The aim of this paper is to discuss the traditional interpretation according to which the arguments of Zeno of Elea against multiplicity constitute a defense of monism. I will try to prove that Zeno's objections on plurality suppose a previous critique to the existence of the one. Therefore Zeno is neither a monist nor a pluralist but a philosopher who criticizes metaphysical theories that consider being in numerical terms, i. e. as many or as one. I will focus on the analysis of the interpretation of Zeno's philosophy developed by Aristotle. I will consider some passages from Physics, Sophistical Refutations and mainly Metaphysics III. 4. 1001b7-13. I will also include some testimonies from Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, where he discusses the interpretations of Eudemus of Rhodes and Alexander of Aphrodisias that support the Aristotelian point of view on Zeno's philosophy. (shrink)

It might seem quite commonplace to say that Aristotle identifies fire, air, water and earth as the στοιχεῖα, or ‘elements’ – or, to be more precise, as the elements of bodies that are subject to generation and corruption. Yet there is a tradition of interpretation, already evident in the work of the sixth-century commentator John Philoponus and widespread, indeed prevalent, today, according to which Aristotle does not really believe that fire, air, water and earth are truly elemental. The basic premise (...) of this interpretation is that Aristotle takes fire, air, water and earth to be, in some sense, composite bodies and, as such, analysable into simpler constituents. But, of course, an element of bodies is defined by Aristotle himself as something into which bodies can be analysed, and which does not admit further analysis . So if fire, air, water and earth can be analysed into simpler or more basic constituents, then it would seem to follow that the latter ought to be considered Aristotle's true elements. These are usually identified as the primary contraries hot and cold, dry and wet; many, perhaps most, commentators would insist also upon prime matter as the subject upon which these contraries act. (shrink)

It is customary to associate the birth of European science with the name of Thales. For example: "In the history of mankind there come moments when new forms of action or thought arise so suddenly that they produce the impression of an explosion. Such is precisely the case with the rise of science—rationalistic scientific knowledge—in Asiatic Greece, in Ionia, at the end of the seventh century B.C.E., with Thales of Miletus and his school".

The Red Queen hypothesis, or the ability organisms have to control and regulate the available trophic energy, is a recently proposed parameter for measuring fitness. Firstly, this hypothesis is analysed in terms of its heuristic power. Secondly, the claimed causal dependence between this parameter and a, still controversial, law of constant extinction is judged to be unjustified, however reasonable such a claim appears to be. Finally, the ubiquity of competition in nature which is seemingly required by the Red Queen and (...) supposedly realized at the expense of a mutualistic alternative, is deemed to be a questionable assumption. (shrink)

Modern thought would present only an incomplete and fragmentary picture of philosophy to us if we were to regard it as being completely disconnected from the elemental forces and sources of Greek philosophy. The corrective aspect that protects it from any such attempt at unmethodical isolation is, however, given within itself and in its own content. Its own inner progress necessarily leads it back to the principles and questions that distinguished Greek speculation, which it embodied in typical forms. The thought (...) of the modern age proves its specificity in the fact that, notwithstanding the richness of content that it gains, it remains conscious of its relatedness to these basic logical forms and strives to return to them of its own accord. They will thus themselves appear to us of their own accord and incite us to regard their contents, if we just allow ourselves to follow the course of the investigation. (shrink)

ArgumentIn 1895 when the Lumière brothers unveiled their cinematographic camera, many scientists were elated. Scientists hoped that the machine would fulfill a desire that had driven research for nearly half a century: that of capturing the world in its own image. But their elation was surprisingly short-lived, and many researchers quickly distanced themselves from the new medium. The cinematographic camera was soon split into two machines, one for recording and one for projecting, enabling it to further escape from the laboratory. (...) The philosopher Henri Bergson joined scientists, such as Etienne-Jules Marey, who found problems with the new cinematographic order. Those who had worked to make the dream come true found that their efforts had been subverted. This essay focuses on the desire to build a cinematographic camera, with the purpose of elucidating how dreams and reality mix in the development of science and technology. It is about desired machines and their often unexpected results. The interplay between what “is” (the technical), what “ought” (the ethical), and what “could” be (the fantastical) drives scientific research. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the debates around the interpretation of Parmenides’ Being, in order to draw out the preconceptions that lie behind such debates and to scrutinize the legitimacy of applying them to a text such as Parmenides’ poem. With a focus on the assumptions that have driven scholars to seek clarity within the notoriously ambiguous verse of the poem, I ask whether it is possible to develop an analysis of Parmenides’ Being that is sympathetic both to his clear interest in (...) argument, logic, knowledge and truth and to his ambiguous expression and cultural and literary resonances. (shrink)

The central recommendation of this article is that philosophers trained in the analytic tradition ought to add the sensibilities and skills of the historian to their methodological toolkit. The value of an historical approach to strictly philosophical matters is illustrated by a case study focussing on the medieval origin of conceivability arguments and contemporary views of modality. It is shown that common metaphilosophical views about the nature of the philosophical enterprise as well as certain inference patterns found in thinkers from (...) Descartes to Chalmers have their origin in the theological concerns of the Scholastics. Since these assumptions and inference patterns are difficult to motivate when shorn of their original theological context, the upshot is that much post-Cartesian philosophy is cast in an altogether unfamiliar, and probably unwelcome, light. The methodological point, however, is that this philosophical gain is born of acquaintance with the history of ideas. (shrink)

The debate concerning the relations between matter and motion has the same age as philosophy itself. In modern times this problem was transformed into the one concerning the relations between mass and energy. Newton identified mass with matter. Classical thermodynamics brought this conception to its logical conclusion, establishing an ontic dichotomy between mass-matter and energy. On the basis of this pre-relativistic conception, Einstein's famous equation has been interpreted as a relation of equivalence between mass-matter and energy. Nevertheless, if we reject (...) this epistemologically illegitimate identification, it is possible to elaborate a unitary conception of matter, which at the same time is an argument for the unity between matter and motion. In particular, the classical antithesis between matter and field becomes obsolete in the frame of the proposed interpretation. (shrink)

I offer an examination of a core element in the reflectiveness of Heraclitus’ thought, namely, his rebuke of polymathy . In doing so, I provide a response to a recent claim that Heraclitus should not be considered to be a philosopher, by attending to his paradigmatically philosophical traits. Regarding Heraclitus’ attitude to that naïve form of ‘wisdom’, i.e., polymathy, I argue that he does not advise avoiding experience of many things, rather, he advises rejecting experience of things as merely many (...) independent things in their manifoldness , and, instead, to understand their unity and thereby to unify our knowledge of them. (shrink)