Aristotle on Inquiry
Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms

Argues that, for Aristotle, scientific inquiry is governed both by a domain-neutral erotetic framework and by domain-specific norms.

James G. Lennox (Author)

9780521193979, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 May 2021

348 pages
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.63 kg

'Aristotle's methodology of discovery is as full of genius and sophistication as his extraordinary discoveries themselves. No one interested should miss this major study by a leading expert.' Sarah Broadie, Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews

Aristotle is a rarity in the history of philosophy and science - he is a towering figure in the history of both disciplines. Moreover, he devoted a great deal of philosophical attention to the nature of scientific knowledge. How then do his philosophical reflections on scientific knowledge impact his actual scientific inquiries? In this book James Lennox sets out to answer this question. He argues that Aristotle has a richly normative view of scientific inquiry, and that those norms are of two kinds: a general, question-guided framework applicable to all scientific inquiries, and domain-specific norms reflecting differences in the target of inquiry and in the means of observation available to researchers. To see these norms of inquiry in action, the second half of this book examines Aristotle's investigations of animals, the soul, material compounds, the motions of heavenly bodies, and respiration.

Introduction
I. Erotetic Frameworks and Domain Specific Norms: 1. The Goal of Knowledge and Norms of Inquiry
2. An Erotetic Framework: The Posterior Analytics on Inquiry
3. A Discourse on ???????
4. Natural Science: Many Inquiries, One Science
II. Natural Inquiries: Autonomy and Integration: 5. The ??????? of Nature
6. The ??????? of Animals
7. The Soul: One Subject, Many Methods?
8. The Order of Inquiry I: Right and Left in Cosmology and Zoology
9. The Order of Inquiry II: The Debt of Aristotle's Zoology to Meteorology IV
10. Framework Norms meet Domain Specific Norms: Aristotle on Respiration.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP], Humanities [H]