Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Moderne Methode - Aristoteles (Analytica Posteriora)

Kurzinhalt: On all three counts (Praxis, Autonomie, Relation) it ran counter to the ideal set forth in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics; first principles - method

Textausschnitt: 7/10 Now I have already had occasion to point out certain elements in that revolution. It aimed at utility, and so it was concerned with everyday materials, their manipulation, their mastery, through a process of trial and error. It demanded autonomy: its basic terms and relations were to be mathematical in their origins and experimental in their justification. It was concerned not with words but with reality and so it excluded questions that could not be resolved by an appeal to observation or experiment. On all three counts it ran counter to the ideal set forth in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Despite an initial concern with understanding things, that work devoted its efforts to the construction of a theory of science out of the terms, relations, inferences constitutive of the demonstrative syllogism. Instead of developing science by combining mathematical notions with their experimental verification, the Posterior Analytics conceived philosophy and science as a single, logically interlocking unity, in which philosophy was to provide the sciences with their basic terms and principles. Instead of directing men's minds to practical results, Aristotle held that science was concerned with necessary truth, that what can be changed is not the necessary but the contingent, and so the fruit of science can be no more than the contemplation of the eternal truths it brought to light. (147f; Fs) (notabene)
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11/10 Aristotle, then, was quite right in holding that a science that consisted in the grasp of necessary truth had to be purely theoretical and could not be practical. But from the start modern science intended to be practical. Today there are many steps along the way from basic research to pure science, from pure science to applied, from applied to technology, from technology to engineering. But the multiplicity does not obscure the underlying unity. For us good theory is practical, and good practise is grounded in sound theory. Where the Aristotelian placed his reliance on first principles he considered necessary, the modern scientist places his reliance ultimately not on his basic laws and principles but on his method. It was the method that brought forth the laws and principles in the first place, and it will be the method that revises them if and when the time for revision comes. (149; Fs) (notabene)