Abstract

Few interpreters of Aristotle have denied that both empirical, inductive methods and some kind of systematic deduction played a role in the philosophy of the biologist who expounded the West's first formal logic. But it has usually been the fashion to focus on one side of this polarity. In recent decades the focus has been on the empirical Aristotle. But some of the latest studies emphasize that Aristotle varied his methods according to context. G. E. L. Owen, for example, although he feels that Aristotle took little care to separate inductive and deductive methods in the treatises, does allow that he uses deduction at times, and mentions book 6 of the Physics among them.