Organon

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The Organon (Greek: Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logic. The name Organon was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics. They are as follows:

• Categories
• On Interpretation
• Prior Analytics
• Posterior Analytics
• Topics
• Sophistical Refutations

Constitution of the texts

The order of the works is not chronological (which is now hard to determine) but was deliberately chosen by Theophrastus to constitute a well-structured system. Indeed, parts of them seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. The arrangement of the works was made by Andronicus of Rhodes around 40 BC.^{[ 1]}

Aristotle's Metaphysics has some points of overlap with the works making up the Organon but is not traditionally considered part of it; additionally there are works on logic attributed, with varying degrees of plausibility, to Aristotle that were not known to the Peripatetics.

• The Categories (Latin: Categoriae) introduces Aristotle's 10-fold classification of that which exists: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion.
• On Interpretation (Latin:De Interpretatione, Greek Perihermenias) introduces Aristotle's conception of proposition and judgment, and the various relations between affirmative, negative, universal, and particular propositions. It contains Aristotle's principal contribution to philosophy of language. It also discusses the Problem of future contingents.The square of opposition or square of Apuleius has its origin in the four marked sentences to be employed in syllogistic reasoning: Every man is white, the universal affirmative and its negation Not every man is white (or Some men are not white), the particular negative on the one hand, Some men are white, the particular affirmative and its negation No man is white, the universal negative on the other. Robert Blanché published with Vrin his Structures intellectuelles in 1966 and since then many scholars think that the logical square representing four values should be replaced by the logical hexagon which by representing six values is a more potent figure because it has the power to explain more things about logic and natural language. The study of the four propositions constituting the square is found in Chapter 7 and its appendix Chapter 8. Most important also is the immediately following Chapter 9 dealing with the problem of future contingents mentioned above. This chapter and the subsequent ones are at the origin of modal logic. There is perhaps a superiority of Blanché's hexagon in the field of modal logic too in so far as it explains clearly the nature and importance of the bilateral possible. The notion of bilateral possible is crucially important to understand both logic and natural language when applied to modal values.
• The Prior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Priora) introduces his syllogistic method (see term logic), argues for its correctness, and discusses inductive inference.
• The Posterior Analytics (Latin: Analytica Posteriora) deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge.
• The Topics (Latin: Topica) treats issues in constructing valid arguments, and inference that is probable, rather than certain. It is in this treatise that Aristotle mentions the Predicables, later discussed by Porphyry and the scholastic logicians.
• The Sophistical Refutations (Latin: De Sophisticis Elenchis) gives a treatment of logical fallacies, and provides a key link to Aristotle's work on rhetoric.

Influence

The Organon was used in the school founded by Aristotle at the Lyceum, and some parts of the works seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. So much so that after Aristotle's death, his publishers (Andronicus of Rhodes in 50 BC, for example) collected these works.

Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, much of Aristotle's work was lost in the Latin West. The Categories and On Interpretation are the only significant logical works that were available in the early Middle Ages. These had been translated into Latin by Boethius. The other logical works were not available in Western Christendom until translated to Latin in the 12th century. However, the original Greek texts had been preserved in the Greek-speaking lands of the Eastern Roman Empire (aka Byzantium). In the mid-twelfth century, James of Venice translated into Latin the Posterior Analytics from Greek manuscripts found in Constantinople.

The books of Aristotle were available in the early Arab Empire, and after 750 AD Muslims had most of them, including the Organon, translated into Arabic, sometimes via earlier Syriac translations. They were studied by Islamic and Jewish scholars, including Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Muslim Judge Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes (1126–1198); both were originally from Cordoba, Spain, although the former left Iberia and by 1168 lived in Egypt.

All the major scholastic philosophers wrote commentaries on the Organon. Aquinas, Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on On Interpretation. Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on the Categories and Sophistical Refutations. Grosseteste wrote an influential commentary on the Posterior Analytics.

In the Enlightenment there was a revival of interest in logic as the basis of rational enquiry, and a number of texts, most successfully the Port-Royal Logic, polished Aristotelian term logic for pedagogy. During this period, while the logic certainly was based on that of Aristotle, Aristotle's writings themselves were less often the basis of study. There was a tendency in this period to regard the logical systems of the day to be complete, which in turn no doubt stifled innovation in this area. However Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum ("The New Organon") as a scathing attack in 1620.^{[ 1]} Immanuel Kant thought that there was nothing else to invent after the work of Aristotle, and a famous logic historian called Karl von Prantl claimed that any logician who said anything new about logic was "confused, stupid or perverse." These examples illustrate the force of influence which Aristotle's works on logic had. Indeed, he had already become known by the Scholastics (medieval Christian scholars) as "The Philosopher", due to the influence he had upon medieval theology and philosophy. His influence continued into the Early Modern period and Organon was the basis of school philosophy even in the beginning of 18th century.^[1] Since the logical innovations of the 19th century, particularly the formulation of modern predicate logic, Aristotelian logic has fallen out of favor among many analytic philosophers.

Notes

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Organon

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Organon.

• Aristotle article at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Aristotelian Logic (PlanetMath's entry)
• Aristotle's Logic entry by Robin Smith in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Aristotle Organon And Other Works e-book at archive.org.
• Interactive Syllogistic Machine for Aristotle's Logic A web based syllogistic machine for exploring fallacies, figures, terms, and modes of syllogisms.