Aristotle’s Natural Science:

the Many and the One

James G. Lennox

I Introduction

The concept of ‘science’ is used at the present time in two closely re-
lated but distinct senses: to refer to the structured knowledge of a do-
main, and to refer to the norm-governed investigation of a domain.
This ambiguity provides us with two ways of thinking about the unity
of science. We can ask whether the knowledge we have of a domain is a
structured unity —for example, ‘Is there one biological theory that uni-
fies (perhaps via a single pattern of explanation) all our knowledge of
the living world?’ Or, we can ask, ‘Is there a single set of methods that,
if followed, will lead to knowledge of the domain in question?’
Aristotle’s Greek operates in a very different manner. The word
 as it is used in the Posterior Analytics (APo) refers primarily to
the structured knowledge of a domain, indeed knowledge structured
1
by causal demonstration from fundamental principles. His vocabulary
for investigation and inquiry, however, is rich and complex. And there
is a great deal to be said for seeing the two books of that complex work
as divided into an exploration of the structure of scientific knowledge
in Book I and into the sorts of inquiry that are involved in the produc-
tion of scientific knowledge in Book II. In favor of this view are the

1 Technically this is  (APo I 2, 71b9) and  is used regularly

in a looser fashion — for example when he distinguishes  of the fact from
 of the reasoned fact (APo I 13, 78a22).

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2 James G. Lennox

opening lines of Book II: “The objects of inquiry are equal in number to
those we know scientifically” (APo II 1, 89b23-4).
The problem that motivates the present paper concerns the relation-
ship between the methods of search or inquiry employed in the pursuit
of knowledge and the goal object, scientific knowledge. It is a problem
that is still with us today, and one that Aristotle created: given the many,
disparate forms taken by the scientific investigation of nature, is there
sufficient underlying unity to consider them forms of a single, common
endeavor? And if one aims to reply in the affirmative, is the affirmation
based on a unity of purpose and method of investigation, a unity in the
resulting scientific knowledge, or some combination of the two?2
I said: Aristotle created this problem. What I have in mind by saying
that is that Aristotle takes the first explicit step toward sub-dividing
the study of the natural world into a variety of distinct, and somewhat
autonomous, investigations (and distinct works, logoi, presenting the
results of those investigations).3 Prior to Aristotle, there appear to have
been a variety of works On Nature ( ),4 but it does not ap-
pear to have been assumed (to take one example more or less at random)
that the study of animal generation was a distinct study from the study
of the transformation of the elements or of the nature and motions of
the heavenly bodies — let alone distinct from the study of animal parts
or animal motion.5 By contrast, Aristotle’s investigation of nature is an
articulated investigation, and self-consciously so: each work begins by
introducing its subject as distinct from others, and usually by indicating
how, though distinct, it is related to other natural investigations.

2 A major motivating theme of the logical empiricist movement was to make the
case for the unity of science, a classic discussion being that of Oppenheim and
Putnam 1958. (As Thomas Kuhn notes in the preface to the first edition of the
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it began life as a contribution to Volume II of
the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.) Recent defenses of various sorts of
scientific ‘disunity’ or ‘pluralism’ can be found in Dupré 1993, Mitchell 2003, and
Rosenberg 1994.
3 A point nicely stressed in the opening pages of Wilson 2000.
4 The reference to the Timaeus in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives (III 60:   
) suggests it too was considered a contribution to this tradition, and it does
share the attribute of being a single, all-encompassing treatise on nature.
5 I am going to set aside for the moment the development, recognized by both Plato
and Aristotle, of astronomy, optics, mechanics and harmonics. This is an important
part of the story, and I will return to it.

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 3

This division of the investigation of nature is not sufficient to cre-

ate a concern about the unity of scientific knowledge, however. Aristotle
might have imagined the results of each investigation of nature as an
autonomous  — but in fact, as we shall see, he does not ap-
pear to have.6 The program or plan (, 339a9) for the study of
nature that opens the Meteorology (Mete) appears to treat the study of
nature as some sort of unity — it begins with an articulation of general
principles about natural motion and change and is complete once ani-
mals and plants have been studied. Whereas references to mathemati-
cal knowledge throughout the corpus typically refer in the plural to
a number of distinct disciplines (see references in note 6), references
7
to scientific knowledge of nature do not. Metaphysics VI 1 identifies
  as knowledge of a certain kind of being, namely the
kind consisting of substantial beings with their own sources of change
and rest (1025b21-3). And a concern about the unity of natural science
motivates one of the principle questions in Physics II 2: since there are
two natures (material and formal) grounding this inherent source of
change, does this threaten the possibility of nature being studied in a
unified way (cf. 194a15-27)?
Moreover, Aristotle’s natural investigations are self-consciously in-
terdependent. Mete I 2 opens by referring to a number of conclusions
determined in De Caelo that will serve as assumed starting points, and
Ch. 3 opens by referring back to that discussion in the following terms:
‘So having recalled our initial posits and previously stated definitions
(        )…’
(339a33-5). De Motu Animalium (MA) after a brief but important intro-
duction we will return to, begins its argument as follows:

So, then, that a source of the other motions is that which moves itself,
and a source of this is what is unmoved, and that the primary mover
must be unmoved, was determined previously, precisely when we de-
termined, regarding eternal motion, whether or not it exists, and if it
exists, what it is. (MA 1, 698a8-11)

6 And in this respect the science of nature is in stark contrast with mathematics.
See, for example, APo I 14, 79a18-20: 
 . Cf. Metaph IV 1, 1003a25-6; VI 1, 1026a25-
8; XIII 3,1078a33, b2.
7 See, for example, Metaph VI 1, 1025b19, 26, 1026a6, 12; Cael I 1, 268a1, on which see
Falcon, 2005, 31-48.

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4 James G. Lennox

This seems a quite precise reference to Physics VIII 6, and the inquiry
that ensues relies in a number of respects on the conclusions of Physics
VIII.
Similarly, though with less fanfare on Aristotle’s part, Parts of Ani-
mals (PA) II and Generation of Animals II and V are dependent in their
accounts of the constitution and development of the uniform parts of
animals on the theory of the constitution of those parts in Mete IV — as
the last lines of Mete IV 12 would lead you to expect they would be.8
And — to continue narrowing the scope — within the works devoted
to animals there are not only regular cross-references9 but a careful de-
marcation of tasks. For example, in PA IV 10, Aristotle self-consciously
puts off defending the residual nature of seed and menstrual discharge
with the following words:

This [the fact that the same organs are used for reproduction and the
elimination of residues] is because the seed is something moist and a
residue — let this be assumed () for now; later it will be proven
(). And of the same character too are the menstrual dis-
charges in females and that by which there is an emission of seed.
(These things too will be defined () later; for now let it only
be assumed () that menstrual discharges in females are a residue.)
(PA IV 10, 689a5-13)10

There is, in fact, a sustained consideration of precisely this ques-

tion in Generation of Animals I 17-19, and every reason to think this is a

8 ‘Since, then, we’ve gotten hold of the kinds to which each of the uniform bodies
belongs, we need to grasp what each one is in particular, i.e. what blood, flesh or
seed is, and each of the others as well; for we know on account of what each one is,
and what it is, when we’ve gotten hold either of its matter or its account, but most
of all when we’ve grasped both the matter and the account of their generation
and destruction, and whence their source of change. Having gotten clear on these
things [the uniform parts] we must likewise study the parts that are non-uniform,
and finally the things composed from them, that is mankind, plant and the other
things of this sort’ (390b19-22). Is the omission of explicit reference to animals a bit
of dry humor?
9 A reasonably complete list can be found in Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus (Aristotelis
Opera V): Where one starts depending on what one counts as ‘works devoted to
animals’ but at least from 99a21-100b42.
10 For other examples, see Burnyeat 2004, 13-24; Lennox 2009 (in Bowen and Wild-
berg 2009).

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 5

pointed reference to that discussion. The future tense of the references

to proving and defining what must be assumed in the PA IV 10 discus-
sion suggests that Aristotle has a preferred order in which these topics
are to be studied, and the study of the parts contributing to generation,
including the uniform parts, are to be studied later, as part of the study
of generation. Moreover, we are told that it will there be proven that
seed is ‘moist and a residue’ and that seed and menstrual discharge will
be defined there, both of which tasks are accomplished in those chapters
of Generation of Animals I.11
The various treatises that make up Aristotle’s investigation of nature
are, then, both to some extent autonomous and to some extent integrat-
ed.
Now at this point we could explore the nature and extent of the au-
tonomy and the integration in two very different ways. We could ask
the question: Does this pose a problem for the model of the unity of the
scientific knowledge that one finds articulated in the APo I? The refer-
ences to mathematics cited earlier suggest that it would be reckless to
assume that any domain of theoretical philosophy ( 
) has the requisite unity, simply because there is sufficient unity
for there to be a single generic name for it. Aristotle typically talks of
mathematical sciences — indeed, geometry and arithmetic are Aristot-
le’s prime examples in the Analytics of domains of scientific knowledge
between which the borrowing of definitions and proofs to serve as as-
sumptions would be illegitimate (e.g. APo I 7, 75a38-b5). That is, they
are his prime examples of sciences that are distinct and autonomous,
even though they are both referred to as forms of mathematics.
Another option would be to begin with two different questions: [i]
What does the actual practice of borrowing in the treatises devoted to
the study of nature, and Aristotle’s second order comments on that
practice in those treatises, tell us about how he conceives the concep-
tual and explanatory structure of the scientific knowledge of nature? [ii]
How much can we learn from Aristotle’s written works about the actual
methods of inquiry and research that resulted in those treatises? The re-
sults of pursuing these multi-faceted questions could then be compared
with the Posterior Analytics account of the unity of scientific knowledge
and inquiry, and also evaluated in terms of their philosophical merits as
ways of pursuing and structuring knowledge.

11 On all of which see Bolton, in Gotthelf and J. G. Lennox, eds., 1987, 151-66.

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6 James G. Lennox

Today I will have one eye focused on APo and its constraints on hav-
ing unified scientific knowledge of a subject. From that perspective the
concern of this paper can, then, be set up in the form of a dilemma.
Either Aristotle holds that there is one science of nature, or that there is
more than one. If he holds that there is a single, unified science of na-
ture, then the many differentiated investigations raises the concern that
the end product of these investigations will be insufficiently integrated
to meet the Analytics requirements for unity. If, on the other hand, he
holds that there is more than one science of nature, then how can the
many ‘borrowings’ that take place among the natural sciences avoid
the sanctions against such practices in APo?

II Advocates for the One and the Many

A number of authors have stressed the importance of the opening of

Mete I as a guide to the structure of Aristotle’s science of nature. But
what guidance it may provide depends on what sort of structure it
represents, and I find the passage more puzzling than illuminating on
that subject. It is of some importance that Aristotle never uses the term
 in Mete I 1. Rather, in discussing meteorology in relation to
prior topics that seem to correspond, at least in a general way, to our
Physics, Generation and Corruption and de Caelo, he refers to it as ‘a part
of the same ’ (338a26) — the same pursuit, practice, or inquiry
— perhaps the same in virtue of shared rules and standards, though
grounds for the claimed identity are not provided.12 After explaining
what topics such an investigation will take up, Aristotle goes on:

Having dealt with these subjects, we will study whether we are some-
how able, according to the recommended manner13, to give an account

12 For  in this sense, see Sophist 218d, 235c; PA I 1, 639a1, 4 644b15; EN I 1,
1094a1. But this term can also refer to a shared doctrine, as at Theaetetus 183c2;
and to the particular method used in an inquiry, as at Pol I 1, 1252a18, where it
introduces a method to be used both in politics and ‘in other epistêmai’ (cf. Pol IV
1, 1289a18 cf. EN V 1, 1129a6). In this sense, de Anima I 1, 402a12-19 is perhaps the
most philosophically important text. There Aristotle raises the question of whether
there is a single  for inquiring after the substantial being and essence in all
cases, comparable to demonstration in the case of the incidental properties.
13 The Greek is ; a comparison with Pol I 1, 1252a17-
18, where  is used, suggests  is more or less

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 7

of animals and plants, both in general and separately. For having giv-
en an account of these things we would pretty much have reached the
goal of our original plan in its entirety. (339a5-9)

We are free to suppose he means ‘according to the same methods used

in the previously mentioned inquiries’, but again we are told nothing
that forces that meaning on us.
In a little while I will outline the case that this query about the study
of animals and plants is posed as a serious question. If that is true, it has
important implications for my subject today. If the study of animals and
plants is taken to complete an ordered investigation into nature, what
will it mean for the unity of that investigation if there is a serious ques-
tion about whether a significant portion of that investigation will fol-
low a somewhat different method?14 That is, what we are told we next
need to look into is a second order question about whether animals and
plants can be investigated along the lines established for other natural
inquiries.
Myles Burnyeat has recently argued that the many temporally quali-
fied cross-references in the natural treatises confirm that the remarks
opening Meteorology I 1 represent ‘the order of argument and exposi-
tion’ in natural science (2004, 20); earlier (Burnyeat 2001, 113-20) he
talks of a ‘didactic’ and ‘systematic’ order. His main point, with which
I wholeheartedly agree, is that the opening chapter of the Mete should
not be assumed to reflect the order in which Aristotle investigated, or
wrote about, nature, nor a recommendation of such an investigative or-
der.15 The many cross-references in the extant natural treatises are to be
taken as reflecting Aristotle’s views about explanatory or conceptual re-
lationships among these works.16 Andrea Falcon suggests, in addition,

a substitute for  here. I have tried to translate  to capture the
implicitly normative force it seems to carry in these contexts.
14 Burnyeat hints at this option in a footnote to his 2004 essay, 13n16.
15 His discussions do, however, make one questionable assumption: that the closing
reference to a study of animals and plants implies that De Anima is part of this
organized plan for the study of nature.
16 The issue of how to make use of cross-references in investigating such questions is
complex, but I think it is helped by making a number of distinctions. First, I think
one needs to distinguish references that are imbedded in discussion and argumen-
tation (such as the forward references in PA IV 10, noted above, to the arguments
and definitions provided by GA I 17-23) from those which are essentially isolated

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8 James G. Lennox

that this passage reflects causal priorities, priorities that will secure the
unity required for an Aristotelian genos, and thus for an Aristotelian
 (Falcon 2005, x, 1-16). Many years previously, Martha Nuss-
baum, in one of the essays appended to her edition of MA, argued that
the Mete introduction represents “a certain logical order that ought to
be followed in presentation and study” (Nussbaum 1978, 108). In each
case the assumption is that the author of this passage imagines a single,
unified science of nature.
Nussbaum, however, begins the essay just mentioned by suggest-
ing that MA does not fit into this plan of a unified natural science. She
claims that, in virtue of its mix of physics, geometry, cosmology, practi-
cal syllogisms and animal physiology, it ‘contravenes a basic tenet of
[Aristotle’s] philosophy of science’ (109), namely, that each science must
start from true and necessary first principles peculiar to that science,
and those principles must be grounded inductively on that science’s
own appearances. ‘Valid deduction may not pass from one genus to
another’ (110). Nussbaum acknowledges that the discussions, in APo
I 7-13, of the subordination of one science to another could provide an
option, but claims, mistakenly, that these passages only sanction using
materials from one science as ‘a source of illustrations and models’ for
the other.17 Notice that, unlike Burnyeat and Falcon, the assumption ly-
ing behind Nussbaum’s argument is that the different natural studies
presumed to be combined in MA are distinct sciences, not parts of one
science.18

and which could be removed from the text without significant damage to argu-
ment or exposition. In this latter category are a number of references forward and
backward at the beginnings and endings of texts.
17 She cites Owen’s British Academy lecture, ‘The Platonism of Aristotle’ (1966/1986)
as support for this claim. In fact his only explicit reference to the issue in that lec-
ture is this: ‘[Aristotle] allows that sometimes one science may take over and apply
the arguments of another; but these are the exceptions’ (Owen 1986, 213).
18 An assumption that is explicitly acknowledged: ‘[MA] will not only use one sci-
ence to get knowledge about another, but also claim that the second provides a
necessary part of any valid justification of the principles of the first’ (Nussbaum
1978, 112). The issue of interest to me is not in her view that the MA seems to con-
stitute a mixture of sciences, but in the assumption behind that concern, that the
different natural investigations are separate sciences.

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 9

In an interesting response to Nussbaum’s essay, Joan Kung made the

same assumption,19 but argued that the role played by the appeals to
the conclusions of Physics VIII and the apparent references to cosmo-
logical principles in MA are best understood on the model of the sub-
ordinate sciences discussed in APo I 7-13. We have here, she argued, a
case of subordination: ‘the science of motion in general and the science
20
of animal motion.’
Nussbaum and Kung share in common the view that the various
natural treatises (or at least the MA, Cael and Physics VIII) are contribu-
tions to distinct sciences, but disagree over whether this poses a prob-
lem for the author of APo.21 I believe that assumption is mistaken and
that Aristotle considers all of the investigations mentioned at the begin-
ning of the Meteorology to be contributions to a single science, but has
serious concerns about the sufficiency of methods of the other investiga-
tions of nature for the investigation of animals and plants. If that is the
case, and I will give my reasons for believing it is shortly, then the ques-
tions Nussbaum raises about the relation of the MA and the Physics take
on a different shape. The tenets of the APo that Nussbaum assumed
to be violated are proscriptions on the appeal to the starting points of
one science in constructing the demonstrations of facts investigated in
another science. If Aristotle imagines each of these investigations to be
contributions to a unitary  , that tenet cannot, strictly,
be violated by the practices with which she was concerned.22 On the
other hand, Aristotle clearly thinks of these as distinct investigations,
and so a different question arises that is no less difficult: How can

19 Kung 1982, 65-76. (Barnes’ report of this dispute is somewhat misleading; Barnes
1993, 131.)
20 Ibid., 68. In fact, MA, after noting that the different movements found in different
kinds of animals and their causes have been studied in other places (an apparent
reference to De Incessu, and perhaps HA), refers to itself as investigating ‘in general
the common cause of being moved with any motion whatsoever’ (698a4-5).
21 Not an uncommon assumption — for example: ‘The same thing may be treated by
more than one science. For example, man is treated qua a thing-that-is by first phi-
losophy, qua a substance whose principle of motion and rest is in itself by physics,
and qua an animal by biology’ (McKirahan 1992, 63).
22 Problems would, of course, still arise if there is a serious role played by moral
psychology in a natural treatise, but for now I will restrict my focus to the role of
principles from Physics VIII in MA, and its discussions about the movement of the
whole cosmos.

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10 James G. Lennox

Aristotle conceive of , with its many distinct inquiries,

as one science, given what he says about how one secures unity for an
 in the Analytics?

III Why Subordination is not the Answer

The proscription that Nussbaum worried about is stated clearly at

the beginning of APo I 7:

Thus you cannot prove by transferring [a proof] from another kind,

for example something geometrical by an arithmetic proof. (75a38-9)

As Barnes notes, the chapter division is particularly inept in this

case, since this statement follows directly from, and is grammatically
linked to, the closing sentences of the previous chapter. He there insists
that the predicative relationships in the demonstrations of a given sci-
ence must be, and be known to be, in one way or another, per se related
to the kind studied by that science. In a number of critical passages,
however, Aristotle notes exceptions, and Kung thought this was where
to look in understanding what was going on in MA. About these excep-
tions he says:

… of those things the kind of which is different, as with arithmetic and

geometry, it is not possible to apply23 the arithmetic demonstration

23 A common verb to express the relationship between a principle or demonstration

that is more ‘abstract’ or more general and one that is more ‘concrete’ or specific
is  (cf. APo I 9, 75b42-6a3, 76a22-5; I 32, 88a32, 33). Passages in which
the term seems to be playing a similar semantic role (Cael IV 2, 308b2; Resp 7,
474a10-11; Phys III 1, 201b14, V 4, 228b25; Pol III 1, 1275a33-5, b32; III 2, 1276b25)
suggest translating it ‘to apply’. Especially important for fixing its meaning is MA
1, 698a10-14: ‘One should grasp this [the existence and nature of the first unmoved
mover] not only by a universal account, but also in the presence of the particulars
and perceptibles, on account of which we search for the universal accounts, and
to which () we think these accounts should apply ().’ Though it
cannot be reflected in a readable translation, the prepositional phrase  and
the infinitive  are contiguous in the Greek, indicating that the prepo-
sition is simply emphasizing the verb’s prefix. Given its use in the passages we
are looking at, I think Nussbaum’s ‘to harmonize’ is not precise enough; Aristotle
likely has in mind the application of universal accounts via proof to the particulars,
since it was in order to understand them that the search for the universal began.

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 11

to the [proper] incidentals of magnitudes. … The arithmetic demon-

stration always possesses the kind about which the demonstration is
concerned, and other demonstrations do likewise. Therefore the kind
must be the same either without qualification or in a way, if the demon-
stration is to transfer. (75b2-9)

There are two interesting implications of the conclusion here, and

they pull in opposite directions. First, there is apparently a qualified way
in which a kind can be the same; second, it appears as if one can speak
of ‘transferring’ a demonstration even if we are discussing scientific
knowledge of a kind that is without qualification the same.
The qualified sameness in kind he seems to have in mind in these
chapters is that found in, to use the language of Physics II 2, ‘the more
natural of the mathematical sciences’ (194a7-8), that is, optics, mechan-
ics, astronomy and harmonics.

Demonstration does not apply to another kind, other than, as has been
said, geometrical demonstrations to mechanical and optical facts, and
arithmetical demonstrations to harmonic facts. (76a22-5)

However leading up to this conclusion, he has apparently delimited

the class of exceptions in a way that prevents ‘subordination’ helping
us with our problem:

Otherwise it will be like proving something in harmonics by arith-

metic. Such things are proven in a like manner, but the proof differs;
for the fact is from one science (for the underlying kind is different),
while the reason why is from the science above, to which the attributes
belong per se. Hence from these cases too it is apparent that it is not
possible to demonstrate each thing without qualification other than
from the principles of that thing. But the principles in these cases have
something common. (76a10-15)24

It may be possible to extend this model beyond the cases of the sub-
ordinate mathematical sciences, but if so the extension must be to cases
of two distinct sciences where the causal demonstrations or principles

24 The thought here is followed out in much more detail in APo I 13, 78b34-9a16.

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12 James G. Lennox

from one find application in the other.25 In the APo these ‘subordinate’
sciences are without exception treated by Aristotle as branches of math-
ematics, and I read the lines just translated to be saying that the at-
tributes that are proven to belong to their subjects are, in these cases,
those which belong per se to the higher science, i.e., they are mathemati-
cal attributes — and that is why the geometer or arithmetician is the
appropriate person to prove them. That those attributes are present in
a particular natural domain is a fact established by a different science,
namely, natural science.
The extended discussions of these ‘exceptions’ to the model of the
unity of scientific knowledge in APo I 7, 9, and 13, then, deliver a clear
message: they apply to cases in which certain mathematical demonstra-
tions can be mobilized to explain why a certain range of mathematical
attributes belong to objects that fall under the domain of natural sci-
ence. These discussions are not intended to the deal with the question
of how to understand the relationships among the various investiga-
tions of a single science.

IV Unity of Investigation and Unified Knowledge

I will now turn to outlining a case for the claim that a central motivation
for Aristotle in writing book one of PA was to address one facet of this
question.26 PA I never refers to itself as laying out methods for a distinct
science of animals (he claims consistently to be articulating norms for an
inquiry into nature; cf. 639a12-14). I believe, however, that one of its cen-
tral purposes was to specify and supplement general principles for the
specific purpose of studying a special sub-category of natural entities.
In this sub-category, the natural entities undergo an especially complex
form of unqualified coming to be and passing away;27 goal-causation is

25 Elsewhere I have argued that three passages in Aristotle (the opening and closing
passages of the Parva naturalia — Sens 1, 436a18-b2, Resp 21, 480b22-31 — and PA II
7, 653a1-10) suggest that he did see the relationship between medicine (a produc-
tive science) and the science of nature on the subordinate science model (Lennox
2005, 55-72, esp. 66-8).
26 This discussion thus provides detailed support for the suggestive comments in
Falcon 2005, 4-7 and Lennox 2005.
27 It is not difficult to be precise about the nature of the complexity. For example, at
the beginning of biological generation one begins with a small amount of a single

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 13

primary in their investigation; the formal nature of interest is soul, or

at the least ensouled beings; and there are distinctive forms of neces-
sity, demonstration and division for that context.28 Having argued for
a number of distinctive standards for such an investigation in PA I 1-4,
Ch. 4 concludes:

So then: we have said how one ought to appraise the inquiry concern-
ing nature () and in what manner the study
() of these things might proceed methodically and with great-
est ease (  ); and further, concerning division, in what
way it is possible by pursuing it to grasp things in a useful manner,
and why dichotomy is in a way impossible and in a way vacuous.
(644b17-21)

In referring to ‘inquiry’ and ‘study’, this passage echoes the very first
words of the treatise:  … . The fo-
cus in PA I, then, is on questions about study and about how to proceed
with that study,29 in that very sub-category of the study of nature about
which Mete I 1 raises questions.30
Recall that PA I 1 opens by asserting that a certain distinction of
cognitive capacities can be found in every study and systematic inquiry
— there is the capacity that is properly referred to as scientific knowl-
edge () of the subject of investigation; and there is the capacity

uniform part (a form of blood, menses, in blooded animals), and over a period of
days, weeks or months, depending on the species, what comes to be is a coordi-
nated system of functioning non-uniform parts.
28 That is, the primary contrast, which comes out explicitly in Chapter 5, is between a
study of eternal natural things governed by absolute necessity, and generated natural
things governed by necessity conditional on an end. Compare PA I 1, 639b6-40a9
with PA I 5, 644b22-5a6.
29 It will be noted that I am uncertain whether there is a single way of translating
 in Aristotle. Alan Code in conversation has suggested that ‘way of pro-
ceeding’ might do the trick; I am intrigued by this suggestion but worry that the
word may have more precise senses in different contexts. For now I am allowing
context to shape translation.
30 On that score, the following comment at the end of On Length and Shortness of Life
is interesting, and interestingly evocative of the last sentence of Mete I 1: ‘… it
remains for us to study youth and old age, and life and death. For having defined
these things the inquiry about the animals (    ) will have
achieved its goal’ (Long 6, 467b5-9).

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14 James G. Lennox

to discriminate between well-presented and poorly presented reports

of the results of an investigation — a certain sort of learned skill (
 ), he says (639a1-4). Among people who have this lat-
ter capacity, Aristotle introduces a further distinction, between those
who are able to make such discriminations across a wide range of sub-
jects, and those who can do so ‘about something of a delimited nature’
(639a8-10). He later claims that by using a certain set of standards, the
pepaidoumenos regarding a determinate subject can discriminate well-
formed and ill-formed claims independently of knowing whether the
claim is true or false (639a14-15). A concrete example of what I imagine
he has in mind here can be found near the close of Generation of Animals
V 8, where Aristotle recounts Democritus’ claims about the timing and
mechanics of teeth emerging and falling out.

So though nothing prevents the teeth coming to be and falling out in

this way, nevertheless it is not on account of these [necessities], but on
account of the goal; these necessities are causes as producing move-
ment, as instruments and as matter … (789b6-8)

The problem is not that Democritus’ account of the mechanics is false;

the problem is that he has not recognized that these are instrumental
causes subserving a goal. Understanding one of the standards of judg-
ment developed in PA I 1 — the priority of goal causation — allows the
investigator to recognize the limitations of Democritus’ theory whether
his account of the mechanics is correct or incorrect.
Aristotle immediately tells us that in natural inquiry too (
 , 639a12) we require certain standards () by which
we can appraise the manner of its proofs — and these standards con-
stitute, at least in part, the subject specific, paideia-like capacity of the
investigator of nature. And when the next sentence begins ‘I mean, for
example, whether …’ (639b15), I take it that a discussion aimed at ar-
ticulating such standards has begun. The first question Aristotle tackles
is restated as an aporia in Chapter 4, just prior to answering it:

On the one hand, in so far as what is indivisible in form is a substantial

being, it would be best, if one could, to study separately the things that
are particular and undivided in form — just as one studies mankind,
so too bird, for this kind has forms. … But on the other hand, in so far
as this will result in speaking many times about the same affection
because it belongs in common to many things, in this respect speaking
separately about each one is somewhat silly and tedious. (644a29-34)

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 15

In ‘Divide and Explain: the Posterior Analytics in Practice’ I related

this aporia and its solution to the concerns of APo I 5, about unqualified
scientific knowledge of an attribute being dependent on identifying the
subject at the proper level of universality relative to the attribute in
question.31 It also echoes the aporetic discussion in APo I 24-5, about
whether ‘partial’ demonstration or ‘universal’ demonstration is better.
Aristotle there defends universal demonstration on the premise that to
know that an attribute belongs to something one must know it through
that in virtue of which it belongs.

For if having two right angles holds of something not as isosceles but
as triangle, then if you know that an isosceles has two right angles,
you will know it less as such than if you know that triangles have two
right angles. (85b5-8)

The claim here is, of course, relative to the predication that you are
aiming to understand. You will understand, for example, that isosceles
triangles having two equal angles better qua isosceles, not qua triangle.
And though it is a less universal demonstration than one about all tri-
angles in one sense of ‘universal’, to prove that all isosceles triangles
have two equal angles based on their having two sides of equal length
is not, in the relevant sense, a partial demonstration, but a universal
one.32
It is the implementation of this norm in the context of an investiga-
tion of animals that Aristotle takes up first in PA I:

… should one take each substantial being singly and define it inde-
pendently, taking up one by one the nature of man, lion, ox, and any
other animal, or should one rather first establish, according to some-
thing common, the attributes common to all. (639a15-19)

He follows this introduction of the question by distinguishing,

at 639a20-b3, between attributes that are common to many kinds of
animals in an undifferentiated way (e.g., sleep, respiration, death, all
treated universally in the Parva Naturalia) from those that are spoken

31 Lennox 1987, 90-119; reprinted in Lennox 2001b, Ch. 1.

32 Recall that in APo I 4, ‘universal’ is defined in a restricted way as ‘what holds of
every case, in itself and as such’ (73b26).

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16 James G. Lennox

of in common but ‘differ by a difference in form’ (here his example is

the way that the common attribute locomotion is differentiated into a
variety of forms, a fact reflected by the different treatments afforded
the attribute in MA and in De Incessu Animalium). He then restates the
question, as a question about ‘how one ought to carry out an investiga-
tion ()’:

… whether one should study things in common according to kind

first, and then later their distinctive characteristics, or whether one
should study them one by one straight away. (639b4-5)

The differences between the initial formulation of the question and

this reformulation are subtle, but important. First it is now worded ex-
plicitly as a question about how to investigate, and that is reflected in the
explicit question about the proper order of investigation. The contrast
between ‘common’ and ‘particular’ objects of investigation is retained,
but supplemented by a contrast between a level of investigation focused
on kinds () and a later one focused on distinctive characters ().
Notice too that the alternative now posed is between [i] a two-tiered
investigation in which one moves from determining what belongs in
common to kinds to characteristics that are distinctive (presumably to
sub-kinds) and [ii] one that goes immediately to the particular kinds,
e.g., lion or ox. The two-tiered investigation reflects the distinction that
has been made between commonly possessed, undifferentiated fea-
tures and those common features that are differentiated ‘according to
form’, a distinction you are far more likely to notice if you begin at the
more general level.
But interestingly, at this stage, in Chapter 1, Aristotle leaves this
question of where an investigation ought to start as a question and, as I
noted earlier, reintroduces it as an aporia in Chapter 4 before finally an-
swering it; and I have argued on a number of occasions that the reason
for doing so is related to the need to have a method of division in place
that allows you to trace down from the common generic to the specific
formal level the sorts of differentiations he is discussing here, a method
of division not articulated until Chapters 2 and 3.33
The second question taken up in PA I 1 is also not answered imme-
diately, but the necessary tools for doing so are supplied more quickly

33 Lennox 2001, 121-3

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 17

and Aristotle returns to answer it in about a Bekker column. The second

question is ‘whether, just as the mathematicians explain the phenom-
ena that concern astronomy, so too the investigator of nature, having
first studied the phenomena regarding animals and the parts of each,
should then state the reason why and the causes, or whether he should
proceed in some other way’ (639b7-10).34
The phenomena of interest are those of animals and their parts, but
the proper name for the investigator in this case is . The only
alternative actually described here, that of following the mathemati-
cal astronomer, seems to echo the following remarks in Prior Analytics
I 30:

Thus the principles are provided by experience in each case. I mean

for example, astronomical experience provides the principles of as-
tronomical knowledge; for when the appearances had been grasped
sufficiently, astronomical demonstrations were easily discovered. And
it is likewise with any other art or science. So that if the predicates
about each thing have been grasped, we will be well prepared to ex-
hibit their demonstrations. (46a20-4)

There are a number of steps that need to be taken to connect these

passages, of course. But I want to suggest that the question is raised in
the way that it is, and where it is, in PA I 1 because we are now in a con-
text of investigating a special class of natural substances that [i] come
to be, [ii] do so in a particularly complex and coordinated manner and
[iii] have a vast range of diverse appearances to be grasped. Thus while
the way of proceeding mentioned in this passage may be relatively un-
problematic as a claim about mathematical astronomy, it is genuinely
unclear what the implications of the general claim are for a natural sci-
entist who wishes to conduct a systematic investigation of animals.

34 There are a number of interesting features of the way this question is posed that I
will have to ignore here. For example, as indicated by the fact that it is mathemati-
cians that conduct the proofs in astronomy, astronomy is considered by Aristotle
a subordinate mathematical science, though a natural study such as that reflected
in De Caelo will supply the phenomena. This complication is ignored here, though
the idea that it is the mathematician that supplies the reason why follows the line
of the APo. On the other hand, the plural ‘causes’ may be looking forward to the
next sentence, where we hear that there are more causes than one concerned with
natural generation.

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18 James G. Lennox

That this is the concern that lies behind Aristotle’s second question
about how to proceed accounts for the line of argument that precedes
the presentation of the answer to that question, some 33 lines later.
Those intervening lines begin with the statement of a third question,
one that arises from what ‘we see concerning natural generation’.

… since we see more than one cause of natural generation, e.g., both
the cause for the sake of which and the cause whence comes the origin
of motion, we need also to determine, about these causes, which is
naturally first and which second. (639b11-14)

In the case of mathematical astronomy the issue of prioritizing be-

tween two of the causes operative in nature will not come up, but it does
in the study of animal generation. At the very least, then, the question
of whether one should first study the phenomena and then their cause
requires elaboration — since there are a number of causes involved in
accounting for naturally generated beings, which cause should be taken
up first after a study of the phenomena?
There is, then, an interesting parallel between the two unresolved
questions: both are initially stated as stark alternatives. The first re-
quires the systematic development of a more complex theory of divi-
sion before it can be answered, and is focused on grasping the natures
of animals as fully developed beings. The second concerns causal un-
derstanding and requires the more complex account of causation and
necessity that Aristotle develops for the science of nature, including a
view about the priority of goal causation to material and motive causa-
tion. The fact that the objects of central concern in PA I 1, animals, are
subject to unqualified, substantial coming to be has not, until now, been
mentioned; and the second question cannot be adequately addressed
until one takes seriously the differences between studying eternal, un-
changing substances and substances subject to natural generation and
destruction.
The argument that runs from 639b15-21 defends the causal priority
of the ‘cause for the sake of which’ to the motive cause in ‘things com-
posed by nature and by art’, and ends by asserting, though not arguing,
that ‘the cause for the sake of which and the noble’ () are pres-
ent more in the works of nature than in those of art. Following directly
after that, from 639b21-40a1, Aristotle argues that necessity is not pres-
ent alike in all natural things, and notes a tendency among those who
investigate nature to refer all explanations to necessity without taking
account of this fact. He then develops this idea by introducing and

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 19

defending a distinction between unqualified necessity and conditional

necessity, the former present in eternal things, the latter present in all
things that partake in generation. There is a link between the introduc-
tion of this distinction and the preceding argument for the priority of
the final cause that is not always noticed. Aristotle’s argument for the
causal priority of ‘that for the sake of which’ depends on the claim that
in giving the account of a thing that comes to be, a doctor or builder
will specify the state of health or the form of the house and will account
for medical or building practice by reference to the goals they aim to
achieve. He then uses the teleological nature of house building in ex-
plaining conditional necessity:

It is necessary that a certain sort of matter be present if there is to be a

house or any other end, and this must come to be and be changed first,
then that, and so on continuously up to the end and that for the sake of
which each comes to be and is. And it is the same way too with things
that come to be by nature. (639b26-30)

The final section of this passage again builds on the two previous
conclusions: 640a1-9 argues for a distinct manner of demonstration
for contexts in which conditional necessity is operative, and where the
starting points and definitions identify goals toward which change pro-
ceeds.

But the manner () of demonstration and of necessity are differ-

ent in the natural and the theoretical sciences. (639b30-40a2)

There has long been debate about how to understand this remark, a
summary of which is provided in Lennox 2001a, 128-31. One plausible
reading of it fits with the claim I am making about PA I: that it is in-
tended to take up the question raised in Mete I 1 about the proper way
to proceed with study of animals and plants. This remark about a dif-
ferent manner of demonstration and necessity suggests that the study
of animals and plants is not to be pursued according to the methods ap-
propriate for the heavenly bodies, for it follows immediately after Aris-
totle introduces the distinction between eternal natural beings governed
by unqualified necessity alone and generated natural beings, where
definitions specify goals and where conditional necessity specifies the
relationship of matter to such goals. This distinction is stressed in the
justly well-known summative chapter of PA I, Chapter 5, which opens
by contrasting the eternal natural substances with those that come to be

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20 James G. Lennox

and pass away, twice acknowledging that, while the former are more
divine, the later ‘take the prize with respect to scientific knowledge’
(645a1-4; cf. 644b28-31). He then says:

Since we have completed stating the way things appear to us about

the divine things, it remains to speak about animal nature ( 
) … . (645a4-6)

Aristotle is, then, acutely aware of a fundamental demarcation in the

natural world that brings with it the question of whether the study of
animal nature is simply another part of the same investigation as the
study of the eternal natural substances or whether the differences are
sufficient to consider it a distinct inquiry with quite different methods
of investigation and modes of demonstration.35
Once all the machinery of teleology integrated with conditional ne-
cessity is in place, and a sketch of what demonstration in this context
will look like has been outlined, Aristotle returns to the second of his
unanswered questions and begins to develop an answer, at 640a9-14.
There isn’t space here to explore the answer fully, but I want to show
how a curious feature of his answer is illuminated by realizing that it
grows naturally out of the development of the argument. The passage
begins as if it will provide a positive response to the question about
whether one is first to study the observable phenomena about ani-
mals before attempting to search for their causal explanations — but
it morphs quickly into a slightly different question: Should one try to
understand the being of an animal as the necessary end result of its com-
ing to be, or rather try to understand its coming to be as conditionally
necessary by reference to the being as end. Of course, he endorses the
latter position — in words that echo the Philebus.

For even with house building, it is rather that these things happen be-
cause the form of the house is such as it is, than that the house is such
as it is because it comes to be in this way. For generation is for the sake
of being; being is not for the sake of generation. (640a15-19)

35 This is a central theme of Falcon 2005 (cf. Ch. 1, and Ch. 4 100-1). Falcon also has an
interesting discussion (88-9) of the way in which the categorization of substance in
Metaph XII serves as the metaphysical framework for this fundamental division of
natural substance.

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 21

There is, I believe, a common reason why the first two questions are
first, and why neither are immediately answered. They are first because
between them they initiate, on the one hand, discussion about how best
to investigate kinds and their attributes so as to facilitate causal expla-
nation; and, on the other hand, discussion about the norms that ought
to govern explanation in the realm of living nature. These are the two
themes that are interwoven throughout PA I, of course. But they are also
the twin tracks of inquiry that Aristotle seeks to integrate in APo II. PA I
seeks this same integration, but now specified for the investigation of the
distinctively complex, dynamic and multi-layered nature of animals.

V Tentative Conclusion

We are told in APo I 28 that a single science is a science of one kind, and
that the kind must be composed from primary things and their parts
and per se attributes (87a38-40). Metaphysics VI 1 apparently identifies
such a kind to which the science of nature is devoted, a kind constituted
of substantial beings with their own inherent principles of motion and
rest. Certainly animals and plants fall within that kind, and so there
would appear to be no question that their study will be part of a uni-
fied science of nature. However, at some point Aristotle realized that
the goal of a unified knowledge of that kind was not to be achieved
by means of a single, undifferentiated method of investigation. At that
point, he became quite self-conscious of the differences in principles
and methods required for the pursuit of knowledge about the natural
world, and from that point on the question of the unity of natural sci-
ence became his concern, as it is ours.
In this essay, I have focused on what I believe was a genuine concern
stated in the opening chapter of the Mete, and have at least outlined a
case for seeing the first book of PA as addressing that concern. Consid-
eration of the relationship between these two passages sheds light on
the relationship between Aristotle’s views about the nature of scientific
inquiry, as stated in the second book of APo, and his views about scien-
tific knowledge, as stated in book I. There is much to learn about that
relationship, I believe, by looking to methodologically reflective pas-
sages in Aristotle’s scientific treatises themselves.

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22 James G. Lennox

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 Aristotle’s Natural Science: the Many and the One 23

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24 James G. Lennox

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