How to write a philosophy paper when you have no idea what the text you are analyzing is supposed to be saying:

John Oldroyd

Professor Arts

History of Philosophy Honors

10 October 2012

Aristotle Paper

            Aristotle has a bogglingly ingenious cranium. The fact that he is able to define scientific thinking and reasoning instantly puts him high above many of today’s greatest minds. According to this brilliant constructor of thought in the second part of his first book of posterior analytics, scientific knowing requires that the basis on which demonstrated knowledge rests (id est the premises of aforementioned demonstrated knowing,) must be invariable truth and primary to the drawn conclusion, or closer to what men can observe and perceive in the physical world. Scientific knowing, then, cannot be demonstrated, because the only way for knowledge that can possibly be demonstrated to be accepted as absolute truth is to establish evidence for or otherwise authenticate that this demonstration proves congruent. Though the term did not surface until later on, Aristotle basically explains the principle of epistemology, or knowing that something is true on the most basic level. One of these “immediate basic truths” is then termed a thesis. A thesis, further, also makes up definition, which should not be confused with a hypothesis as it can be immediately and irrefutably proved. In short, coming to a conclusion requires prior demonstrations, as everything in the conclusion rests upon the assumption that we know to be true the supports of our argument. Indeed, any person, in order to be convinced of something, must know that the principal truths which are used in the conveying of a higher truth are true even more so than of the higher knowledge.

            In his second book, Aristotle elucidates that effective knowledge existing is dependent on a tetrad of questions and their responses. First of the questions is whether or not an object is connected to a specific attribute. For example, “Is courage a positive character trait?” The answer to this question instigates question number two, which is why is there a connection? The third question is whether or not a thing exists, which similarly to the connection between the two preceding questions, propagates the fourth and final question with its response. (The fourth question being what is the nature of that thing). These questions provide men with all of their knowledge; or more accurately, the answers to the questions do.

            The first and third questions enumerated are similar in that each asks whether or not a thing has a middle, and the second and fourth questions further clarify their antecedents by asking what the medium is. By virtue of this connection, we may immediately infer that asking one question of a pair is to ask them both, meaning even as we ask what the nature of a thing is, we ask why it is, and vice versa. The answers come equivalently, so to understand the essence is to know the reason.

            So, how does one discover the essence of a thing? We are further enlightened when Aristotle expounds that "Not all the definable is demonstratable nor all the demonstratable definable.” Definition is the essence of an object; to define something is to say “this is.” Demonstration, on the other hand, is dependent (as expressed earlier) on these basic truths.

            When men want to know why something is, they look to the end result. If we know that a man buys an apple to be healthy, we know, also, that he eats the apple to be healthy, as both, while not exactly the same steps, are comparable in design. In creating a statue, the metals, the sculptor, the art, and the appreciation of the art are causes of the end product. In summary, causes are many, and to know nature, it is obligatory to account for each.

            The aggregate of these conceptions is that physics must be to discover reasons for the nature of things inalterable. “Those things which cause movement by being themselves moved” are no longer inside the realm of physics, and must therefore be adapted into a different form of science. Science, then can be broken into a triad of fields of specific study: things that cannot move (such as mathematics,) things in motion but indestructible, and things in motion that can be destroyed. Physics can be attributed to something when it can alter motion but not be itself moved (such as gravity.) A force that one can say with certainty will result in a specific change, is then worthy of being classified as physics.