Abstract

The title of this book is a bit misleading. Although Malcolm Wilson does argue that Aristotle's theory of science is more unified than is usually thought to be the case, he also examines Aristotle's actual practice of science, particularly biology but also physics, ethics, politics, and the science of being qua being. Hence the central problem of this book is how in practice as well as in theory science is unified in the Aristotelian corpus.Wilson casts Aristotle's theory of science against the Platonic search for universal definitions, which leads to a suppression of differences or ambiguities both among things and their definitions. “Aristotle,” Wilson observes, “sought to redress the imbalance apparent in the Academic prejudice towards the universal” . He does so by restricting the demonstrative syllogism, which forms the core of any scientific argument in two ways: terms must be related through their definitions, and predicates must attach to a subject directly and universally . Consequently, each science has a subject, what it is about, and “is the sum of the demonstrative syllogisms that concern the same subject” .But defining science in this way creates the problem that the sciences become too particularized, too isolated from one another. Here is Wilson's larger question: How can the project of science defined in the Posterior Analytics produce systematic knowledge in which the parts, themselves identified with the various sciences, are sufficiently integrated with one another to form a unified whole? Wilson claims that “abstraction” can serve as a “stepping‐stone” to identifying three ways in which the sciences can be seen as forming a unified whole . In the process of abstraction, a more abstract science, usually a brand of mathematics, “supplied principles and explanations for a fact or conclusion found in a distinct and subordinate natural science” . Understanding abstraction allows us to identify three forms of “semi‐abstraction”—analogy, focality, and cumulation—that allow Aristotle to connect the arguments and subjects of different sciences .A brief analysis of abstraction sets the stage for Wilson's larger project, a full treatment of analogy, particularly in the writings on biology , focality, first in the biological works and then in the Metaphysics —this portion of the analysis is followed by a brief consideration of, in the words of the section title, “Mixed Uses of Analogy and Focality” —and finally cumulation, in a discussion that deals mainly with the sciences of psychology and ethics . The book concludes with two short commentaries, one entitled “The Place of Theology in the Science of Being” , the other “Conclusion: Analogy, Focality, and Cumulation” .Wilson's treatment of the practice of science is sometimes surprisingly brief. The important problem of speed of change , for example, is analyzed in less than two pages . Further, Wilson, observing that the technique of establishing superordinate and subordinate science “and its place in the APo [have] been well studied by the secondary literature,” states that he will not “treat it in the same depth as the three other techniques” . Given its foundational role in his analysis, this technique requires a full examination here. But there is a more serious problem: subordination among sciences also appears in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.1, a text Wilson never mentions. Here subordination rests not on mathematical abstraction but on ends among things in the real world. Thus Wilson does not provide a foundation strong enough to support his argument