carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/06/85)
[Reading this line is punishable by fine, jail sentence, or both.] > This error goes back to Aristotle and his A Priori > approach to knowledge. When he wanted to know how many teeth a horse > had he tried to *reason* it out from first principles, it *never* > occured to him to actually go out and *count* the teeth in a real > horse. Hold yer horses podner. This is confusing Aristotle with Aristotelianism. Aristotle founded the science of biology; he contributed more to biological knowledge than anyone else before modern times. He placed biology firmly on an empirical foundation, using careful observation, collection of specimens, and dissection in his researches (see Appendix). Some of his claims were disbelieved by later naturalists until they were confirmed in the 19th century. In the course of amassing the immense amount of data preserved in his biological treatises, Aristotle made important contributions to embryology, physiology, taxonomy, and anatomy, as well as the philosophy of biology. With regard to horses' teeth, he states in the *Historia Animalium* VI that horses have 40 teeth and that they shed a set of four teeth several times beginning at the age of 2-1/2 years (I have no idea whether this is true -- send me mail). The deductive, "a priori" reasoning criticized in the quotation above is a staple of modern biology (e.g., horses "should" possess teeth of a certain shape since grasses are their principal food -- which was pointed out by Aristotle in the *De Partibus Animalium* in an extensive section on animal teeth). To complain that Aristotle's understanding of biology was deficient by modern standards is (ahem) to look a gift horse in the mouth. APPENDIX. In the *De Generatione Animalium* (III, ch. 10), Aristotle reverses Plato's view that abstract argument is more trustworthy than observation: "This, then, seems to be what happens with regard to the generation of bees, judging from theory and from what are thought to be the facts about them. However, the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained. And if they ever are ascertained, then we must trust the evidence of the senses rather than theories, and theories as well, so long as their results agree with *tois phainomenois* [i.e., with observations, as the context makes clear]." The following is a remarkable passage from the *De Partibus Animalium* (I, ch. 5). Biologists should regard it with reverence, since their science began with this passage. "Of natural substances, some are ungenerated and indestructible throughout eternity, others share in generation and destruction. The former [i.e., the heavenly bodies] are precious and divine, but we have less opportunity to investigate them since the evidence available to the senses, by means of which one might study them and the things that we long to know about, is very scanty. But concerning the things that perish, that is plants and animals, we have much better means of obtaining information, since we live among them. For anyone who is willing to take sufficent trouble can learn a great deal concerning each one of their kinds. But each of these two groups [divine and perishable] has its own attraction.... "Since we have already discussed the things that are divine and set out our opinion about them, it remains to speak of animals without, as far as possible, omitting any one of them, but dealing with noble and ignoble alike. For even in those that are not attractive to the senses, yet to the intellect the craftsmanship of nature provides extraordinary pleasures for those who can recognize the causes in things and who are naturally inclined to philosophy....And so we must not feel a childish disgust at the investigation of the meaner animals. For there is something of the marvelous in all natural things.... "The absence of chance and the serving of ends are found in the works of nature especially. And the end for the sake of which a thing has been constructed or has come to be belongs to what is beautiful." R. Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes