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Method and Metaphor in Aristotle's Science of Nature

Author: Coughlin, Sean

Published in 2013

Item type: Dissertation

Issue: 0

Place of publication:

Comments: Why does Aristotle in Posterior Analytics suggest that metaphors are inimical to science and yet uses them in his natural science? He argues that Aristotle uses metaphor in these works as a form of heuristic reasoning to express conditions an explanation in natural science must meet if it is to explain regular, ordered change. His use of certain endoxa is similar to his use of metaphor; he borrows from conventional understandings of the role of inquiry in the arts in developing his views on the method of inquiry suitable natural science.

Work we read it for: Rhetoric