Explanation through Analogical Reasoning in Aristotle's Natural Science
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- June 18, 2020
- Creator
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Smith, Nathan L.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy
- Abstract
- Analogy features prominently in Aristotle’s writing; yet, the scholarship rarely treats Aristotle’s scientific use of analogy—or its use in any area—apart from its literary merits. The few works that do discuss analogy in Aristotle’s scientific writings tend to make two simple characterizations. The first, the weaker reading, sees analogy as serving a didactic function only and as carrying no explanatory force. It takes analogy to be something along the lines of an example or illustration, something that supports or embellishes the argument or explanation, while not being integral to Aristotle’s investigation or causal accounts. On this view, Aristotle uses analogy to comfort or instruct the reader rather than as part of his methods of inquiry. The second, which offers a somewhat stronger reading, considers analogy to be a heuristic device towards the generation of genuine causal explanations. On this reading, analogy functions as something that guides Aristotle’s investigation and discovery of an explanation but is not itself part of that explanation and, therefore, does not carry any explanatory force itself. No doubt, both didactic and heuristic uses of analogies are part of Aristotle’s writings and are quite common forms of analogy in his corpus. As I argue in the present essay, however, there is a third, largely overlooked type of analogy at play in Aristotle’s scientific treatises, namely, reasoning by analogy. While didactic analogies illustrate a phenomenon that is explainable in other ways and heuristic analogies can help lead one to an explanation, in analogical reasoning, the analogy itself functions as the explanation. This makes reasoning by analogy a potentially powerful method of scientific investigation.
- Date of publication
- spring 2016
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: Hogan Fellowship
- Advisor
- Leunissen, Mariska
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Highest Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2016
- Language
- English
- Extent
- 34
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