in terms of elements recognized immediately for what they are.
That all reasoning is based on the immediate intellectual apprehension of self-evident truths is the doctrine not only of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, but also of the Regulae of Descartes. According to Aristotle, the man of science, as the result of certain preliminary investigations with whose nature and method we are not here concerned, is enabled to formulate various προβλήματα. Each of these προβλήματα is a judgement, true but as yet unproved, asserting the connexion of a property (D) with its appropriate subject (A).[1] The connexion thus provisionally asserted has to be established the unmediated judgement (A-D) has to be converted into a demonstrated truth of science. When the demonstrator starts, there is an 'interval'[2] whose ends are marked by the two terms[3] A and D; and this ' interval ' between the subject and its property is as yet unfilled for his knowledge. His object is to discover the middle term or middle terms which are required to fill this gap the links connecting A with D and thus to substitute, for the unfilled interval A-D, a 'close-packed' interval,[4] i.e. an unbroken suc-
- ↑ The property is a proprium (a καθ' αὑτὸ συμβεβηκός), and the subject is an infima species (an ἄτομον εἶδος) of the γένος which is the subject-matter of the science. The connexion is a necessary nexus between terms themselves universal.
- ↑ A διάστημα.
- ↑ The ὅροι.
- ↑ Cf. e.g. Post. Anal. 84 b 31-853 i. The term πνκνοῦσθαι is of course a reference to musical theory.
