This article presents a seven-step corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that starts with a detailed analysis of each individual text in a corpus that can then be generalized across all texts of a corpus, providing a description of typical patterns of discourse organization that hold for the entire corpus. This approach is applied specifically to a methodology that is used to analyze texts in terms of the functional/communicative structures that typically make up texts in a genre: move analysis. The resulting (...) corpus-based approach for conducting a move analysis significantly enhances the value of this often used methodology, while at the same time providing badly needed guidelines for a methodology that lacks them. A corpus of ‘birthmother letters’ is used to illustrate the approach. (shrink)

RECENT attempts to explain and justify Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction have focused to a great extent on the dialectical dimension of Aristotle's account. For example, T. Irwin maintains that Aristotle justifies the PNC by arguing that there is a sub-set of dialectical opinions which no one can rationally give up. J. Lear supports the importance of the dialectical dimension by summarizing Aristotle's defense of the PNC as follows: The opponent of the PNC tries to argue dialectically that one should not (...) accept it. "Aristotle's point is that there is no conceptual space in which such a rational discussion can occur." By appealing to the limits of rationally, externally, expressible discourse as the basis of the PNC, Irwin and Lear fail to take seriously the more explicitly psychological and metaphysical bases of the PNC. C. Kirwan, and most recently, R. Smith also either argue against or ignore the role of the psychological and metaphysical bases. Smith goes so far as to argue that common axioms like the PNC are simply empty statement schemata of universal validity, i.e., general verbal forms or patterns which no one can deny with intelligibility. (shrink)

AT POSTERIOR ANALYTICS 1.1.71B15 AND FOLLOWING, Aristotle identifies six characteristics of the first principles from which demonstrative science proceeds. These are traditionally grouped into two sets of three: group A: ex alêthôn, prôtôn, amêsôn; group B: gnôrimôterôn, proterôn, and aitiôn. The characteristic, which I believe has been underrated and somewhat misinterpreted by scholars and commentators from Philoponus to the present day, is the characteristic of truth. In this paper I propose to present a textually based interpretation of truth that shows (...) the following: that truth is necessarily linked to being. The example given of nonbeing, the commensurability of the diagonal with the sides of a square, suggests more than simple truth is required for first principles and premises of demonstrative science; and that Aristotle later in the APo changes this characteristic to necessary truth, for he recognizes that truth alone is an insufficient basis for scientific demonstration. The referents of necessary truth are eternal being, and the need for eternal being demands that universals exist extramentally for Aristotle. Finally, one of the important ways that universal genera and species exist for Aristotle are as real, causal principles. (shrink)

In one common book and in two texts of the eudemian ethics", aristotle compares the ends of ethics with the hypotheses of scientific demonstration. t irwin has argued that this comparison is inaccurate and ought to have been abandoned by aristotle. the author argues against irwin's position by contending that ethical ends are comparable to scientific hypotheses. because they are comparable, he further argues that ethical ends, grasped as ends that entail certain necessary pre-conditions for the achievement of these ends, (...) enable aristotle to formulate ethical demonstrations that are most comparable to that kind of demonstration used in the natural sciences. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of a phrase used throughout Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “man begets man.” Basing my interpretation on Aristotle’s account of the generation of animals in general and of monsters (terata) in particular, I argue that the universal genus and the universal species have causal roles to play in the generation of animals. Because the movements in the male sperm of the universal species and the universal genus (though the species and genus do not exist separately) are (...) real, and are actual, not potential, movements, I maintain that the roles of these universals normally precede the further particularization of the developing embryo by the movements in the sperm of the particular father. I show that the roles of the movements of the genus and species are most clear in the case of the generation of monsters. I believe that the often neglected topic of the generation of monsters has important implications for Aristotle’s view of metaphysics and scientific demonstration. (shrink)

A good work in philosophy should, it seems, have two essential characteristics: broad philosophical vision and careful, convincing argumentation. This book has both. Guiding the work is Gill's refreshingly original vision of Aristotle's cosmos. Instead of the austere traditional view of this cosmos in which God as pure form and actuality is at the top, and prime matter as pure matter and potentiality is at the bottom, with composite bodies in between the two, Gill proposes another view. In Aristotle's cosmos (...) God as pure form and actuality is indeed at the top, but at the bottom is not matter as indeterminate potentiality, but as a set of simple elements. These elements have definite natures, but are not composites of matter and form. Because these elements have definite natures, they are not just static building blocks of the composite substances into which they are formed. Rather, material, composite substances, held together by form, tend to be subverted by the very matter of which they are composed. Thus, on Gill's view, "The Aristotelian cosmos is a world of tension and commotion-ordered and preserved by form, disordered by matter". (shrink)

The central thesis of this book, which is defended well, is that only a normative theory of rationality can deal adequately with the subject of the nature of rationality. According to the author, "Good reasons for believing, for evaluating, and for acting go together to make up a seamless and indivisible whole". In light of his central thesis and the scope of this book, which includes an investigation of the mechanics, justification, and rewards of reason, Rescher argues that social scientists (...) who try to present a theory of rationality and at the same time avoid the rationality of normative judgments "[are] condemned from the very outset to an inappropriate view of the rational enterprise". (shrink)

This book is a revised version of Morrison’s doctoral thesis. Unlike many revised theses, however, this book is very readable and clearly presented. Against the common, predominately negative view of Aristotle’s notion of place, this book takes a positive approach to place and has as its explicit aim to set out clearly Aristotle’s account of place in Physics 4.1–5 in such a way as to revive it as a piece of genuinely important philosophy. The author’s refreshingly positive approach to this (...) much-maligned topic in Aristotle serves to sustain the reader’s interest in the author’s interpretation of the sometimes complex and perplexing texts of Physics 4. (shrink)

This special supplementary volume of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy contains the revised versions of papers which were first presented at a colloquium on ancient philosophy held at Oberlin College in 1986. In addition to the five major papers presented at the colloquium, the replies of the five commentators as well as the responses of the authors to the commentators are contained in this volume. In some cases, such as the reply of David Charles, the replies are almost papers in (...) their own right, while in others, the replies are restricted to comments on the major paper. Although there is no theme common to all the papers, the topics of which range from Plato's theory of perception to Aristotle's account of political distribution--and so the volume suffers from a certain lack of unity--the general high quality of the papers and the replies more than makes up for this lack of unity. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, which is Volume 19 in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, Laudan examines, in a very engaging manner, the fortunes of the method of hypothesis in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Most of the essays have appeared elsewhere, but some are published here for the first time. Although there is no introductory or concluding essay that attempts to tie all of the articles together, this collection still succeeds in presenting itself (...) as a unified examination of the important topic of the method of hypothesis. Laudan's expressed intent is to "identify some of the recurrent themes associated with debates about the method of hypothesis and to examine some of the specific causes for its changing fortunes". He does more in this collection than merely fulfill his rather modest intent. In each of his essays, Laudan succeeds in presenting both a clear statement of his particular theme and also a concise and often convincing argument for his particular interpretation of each theme concerning the history of the method of hypothesis. (shrink)

Contrary to what its title may seem to imply, this intriguing study is best appreciated as a study in scientific realism. As Rom Harré notes in the preface, "science only makes sense as a realist enterprise, an attempt, using the means at hand, to truly represent physical reality as it is.... Indeed this very study is a realist enterprise, an attempt to truly represent the social order of life in laboratories and institutes of research, just as they are". When viewed (...) as an exercise in scientific realism, Knorr-Cetina's work is most accurately summarized as an attempt to analyze the work of science in terms of the often overlooked human interests and endeavors that interweave to form the real world context out of which the results of scientific research emerge and have meaning. (shrink)