Aristotle's Problems (or as it is called in Greek Problemata) used to be considered a central text in the study of Aristotle; now, it has been downgraded to "pseudo Aristotelian". A standard modern edition of Problemata begins with the following disclaimer or caveat.

There can be no doubt that Aristotle is not the author of the Problems as they come down to us.¹

I disagree with this downgrading of Problemata. I agree with the old view. Problemata is vastly under-rated. This is because it has "come down to us" as a book of questions and answers, and most of the book is the answers, which are not by Aristotle. The answers are the work of a student. The questions, however, the problemata themselves, were undoubtedly written by Aristotle; they are brilliant and could not have been written by anyone else.²

What we have in Problemata is a student's filled-in copy of Aristotle's book of questions. The answers are an attempt to be "Aristotelian." They are turgid. The questions are amazing. There are hundreds of them.

Why do great excesses make people sick? And why are great excesses cures of illness?

Why do camels yawn in sympathy when other camels yawn?

Why do young men, when they first have sex, feel disgust for their partners?

Why is sweat salty?

Why does everything seem to go in circles to those who are very drunk?

Why is it more tiring for the arm to throw empty-handed than to throw a rock?

Why does sex feel good? Is that the way it has to be for animals or is there some other reason for it?

Why does sitting down make some men fat and other men thin?

Some of these questions have no answer and could have no answer. Others have obvious answers. Some could be answered by science, others could not and one, at least, is based on a "fact" that many people would question. The answers to the questions and the factualness of the facts behind the questions are beside the point. The point of these questions is the questions themselves. They are amazingly provocative of thought and more than that, they may actually give us some idea of what went on at the Lyceum, Aristotle's school in Athens. Problemata also suggests a way to read Aristotle that makes him more accessible. Instead of being read for his "philosophy", Aristotle can be read simply for the brilliance of his observations.

Aristotle's quote/unquote philosophy

Because he is a philosopher, people assume Aristotle must have a "philosophy" and they read him to learn it. This "philosophy" has been extremely influential in Western culture; by all accounts, it is complicated, technical and very, very hard to learn. Reading Aristotle's works for his "philosophy" makes them daunting and relatively inaccessible, especially in comparison with the writings of Plato. This is because Plato wrote for publication and Aristotle did not.

Because Plato used metaphor and drama, it is hard to say exactly what his philosophy is, but his dialogues are not hard to read in either Greek or English. By contrast, Aristotle is almost impossible to read in either language. His works are always translated into smooth, sophisticated, elaborate English sentences, but Aristotle did not write in smooth, sophisticated, elaborate Greek. Aristotle's Greek is a private, cryptic shorthand that even the best scholars find puzzling. For centuries, it was said that Aristotle wrote as he did precisely to conceal his meaning.

Aristotle's father was a doctor. He trained Aristotle as a boy to keep notes of what he was working on. This was what doctors did back then; they kept private notes. Aristotle retained the habit of keeping private notes through the whole of his life. Between the ages 17-37, when he was with Plato at the Academy, Aristotle wrote for an audience and published his work. Except for fragments, we do not have any of that work.³ What we call "The Works of Aristotle," are the unpublished notes Aristotle kept toward the end of his life. These notes do not contain any of the complicated technical terms found in modern logic, mathematics or science and they do not use the elaborate philosophical terminology that has been developed in the years since Aristotle wrote. They are much less sophisticated than the translations make them out to be.

Translation changes Aristotle far more than it does Plato and even in translation, Aristotle is harder to understand than Plato. There are parts of Aristotle's work that no one feels they understand. His Greek words are translated to make the best sense anyone can of them, but no one feels secure in what he says.

Of all Aristotle's works Problemata suffers least in translation. The English translation says exactly what the Greek says. This is because Aristotle wrote the problemata in straight-forward Greek, as simple questions. Almost all begin dio ti, why?

If Problemata is taken seriously, Aristotle's works become easier to read. Problemata is not coherent or consistent and it has no "philosophy". It is simply a collection of brilliant observations turned into questions. It suggests a different way to read Aristotle.

Aristotle can be read not as a philosopher having a "philosophy", but as a philosopher doing philosophy. If Aristotle is read this way, what stands out about his works is that he says so many brilliant things that no one else would ever say. For instance.

If people spend money to gain office, they are likely to think of the office as something they purchased and expect to make a profit on it.⁴

This is something everyone thinks, but only Aristotle says it; and he says it so simply.

Aristotle suffers from having too big a name. He is taken far too seriously. Aristotle does not have to be read as a philosopher at all. He can be read as if he were a really smart, really inquisitive kid. In Aristotle's Vision of the Soul, F.J.E. Woodbridge says

Aristotle ... begins as naively as a child who takes up a hammer and asks his father, "What is a hammer."⁵

"Sometimes", Woodbridge says "I think he is almost incredibly naive."

He observes, experiments and then states as best he can the results he has found, just like the most ordinary of men.⁶

Aristotle looks at whatever there is to see, asks whatever questions come into his mind and says whatever he thinks. What makes him different from ordinary men, is his insistence on seeing the most obvious things and not censoring them.

Old people do not hate or love completely. They love as if they might someday come to hate and hate as if they might someday come to love.⁷

Aristotle is not systematic

Though Woodbridge reads Aristotle in a simpler way than most, even he says,

[p]erhaps the most general and uniform impression which the writings of Aristotle make upon the reader is an impression of system and order,⁸

This has never been my impression of Aristotle. On the contrary, what stands out in Aristotle's works is that he contradicts himself continually. In About Translating,⁹ for example, the center of his logical works, Aristotle says, "nothing happens by chance".¹⁰ A page and a half later he says, "some things do happen by chance."¹¹ Scholars have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to explain this contradiction and it is not an isolated example. In this same book, Aristotle says of two statements "there is no possibility that they can both be true, but sometimes they may be."¹²

Aristotle says, "To think about the truth is hard and easy."¹³ He says, "People must love themselves, but the many (hoi polloi) should not."¹⁴ He says some things people say are orthos and not orthos, "straight and not straight."¹⁵ He says, "It's obvious that by nature some are free and others slaves.... But it isn't hard to see that those who say the opposite speak straight."¹⁶ He says: "In a way, on the one hand, somehow everything has been said, in a way, on the other hand, somehow nothing has been said."¹⁷

Saying contradictory things is so characteristic of Aristotle's work that if one came on a purportedly Aristotelian text that did not overtly contradict itself, one would have to doubt its authenticity. As Cicero remarked, Aristotle

started the practice of arguing both pro and contra upon every topic ... setting out all the possible arguments on either side in every subject. ¹⁸

Aristotle looks at many different things. He sees that each one is part of a bigger thing and that each thing is made up of smaller things. Things are opposites. A hammer has a hitting end and a holding end. Both of these are physical, but a hammer is also metaphysical; it has a purpose that is not in any particular part of it. Aristotle see things as unities and he sees them as dualities. There are opposites and opposite opposites. Some opposites have a middle between them; some do not. The opposite of "all" is "none", but "some" is also the opposite of "all" ... and yet, "some" is the opposite of "none". The opposite of opposites is the same.

In everything, Aristotle sees 1 and 2 and 3 ... and 3+1. +1 is a theme in Aristotle's work. There are several places where he says, "There are three somethings", and then he adds, "Oh yes, there is also one more." There are 4 causes, he says. In various ways they are opposites of each other, but there is one more cause, luck, that is the opposite of the other 4. Aristotle's famous Four Causes are actually 4+1, and his Ten Categories are actually 1+9.

To say that Aristotle's works are "systematic" is like referring to the medieval English legal writs as "The Writ System." The writs were intricate and complicated, but there was no "system" to them. The same is true for Aristotle's works. They are intricate and complicated and they are all of a piece, but they are not systematic. They are the opposite of systematic.

Aristotle school

Aristotle's works are sometimes referred to as "treatises". Some scholars think this is too formal a word and see Aristotle's works as "notes" from which he gave "lectures",¹⁹ but so far as I am aware, there is no evidence for the claim that Aristotle gave lectures at the Lyceum. Just as it has been assumed that Aristotle must have a "philosophy" because he was a philosopher, so it has been assumed that he must have given lectures because he ran a school. ²⁰

The method of Aristotle's school was questions not lectures. Apparently a question was posed, which someone answered. Then, the answerer was questioned on his answer. This obviously harks back to what Socrates did, but at Aristotle's school, the process seems to have been highly formalized. Aristotle describes this method extensively in Topics and Sophistical Refutations, but we do not know how it worked. According to Topics, a sort of rule book and players manual for a game we do not understand, only certain kinds of questions and answers were allowed. Good bad arguments were encouraged. Aristotle says practicing good bad arguments with others helps a philosopher argue with himself.²¹

We know almost nothing about what actually happened at the Lyceum, but Problemata might have been the source of the original questions that were asked at the school. Perhaps each day began with Aristotle putting a particular problema to one student. Perhaps the student was told in advance that it would be his turn that day. Perhaps he was even told from what area his problema might come. The first 54 problemata are all medical.²² The second group of 41 problemata is about sweat. The third group is about drinking and getting drunk. The fourth is about sex. We think of the Academy as the model of a university, but the curriculum at the Lyceum may have been closer to the concerns of modern university students. Perhaps these are the concerns young men (and now young women) have everywhere and always.

Problemata manifests the unsystematic nature of Aristotle's philosophical practice better than any of his other works. In Problemata, Aristotle's doing of philosophy is condensed down to its essence. In Problemata, Aristotle looks at things and writes down his questions about them. He has no concern for consistency or orderliness. He follows the tangents of his observations doggedly. When he comes to the end of one tangent, he jumps to another observation, which may lead to yet another tangent.

Plutarch, a Greek who wrote in Roman times, says Aristotle's method was called "peripatetic" either because the Lyceum was in a place where people had once moved around for exercise or because Aristotle and his students moved around as they disputed, or both. Perhaps Aristotle's school was called "peripatetic" because Aristotle and his students moved from question to question in their studies, going off on nothing but tangents.

In the course of the many arguments he heard about the many questions he posed Aristotle heard observations he liked or had ideas of his own about how to say what could be seen. He wrote them down, or perhaps he had someone else write them down, maybe a slave, or even several slaves. Perhaps he would say to one slave, take that down for the notes on Politics, or put this in the notes on Physics. Some of Aristotle's works sound as if they were dictated and often in his works, Aristotle gets on a roll. He sees something, says something about it, says something about what he has just said, says something about that and then something about that.

Aristotle jumps around in his works and he must have jumped around in the questions he asked. What else are we to think? Is it conceivable that Aristotle looked at ethics on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 to 11:00, the parts of animals on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00 to 12:00 and metaphysics on Fridays from 3:30 to 5:00? Is it conceivable that he did physics for three months, meteorology for the next three and politics for the three after that? Aristotle must have been peripatetic in his studies. He must have moved from topic to topic, question to question. This stand out in his works. He goes where his observations and what he says about them take him.

Aristotle and logos

Some of Aristotle's works seem more organized than others. Perhaps he went over his notes occasionally and organized them. More likely, what organization there is was imposed later by others. Scholars have been studying Aristotle's works for 2000 years. They see plainly enough that there is one great mind behind them all. This mind sees the same things coming up in different places. There are recurrent themes: some things are accidental, others are not; some things exist forever, others come into being and go out of being; some things are potential, others are actual; one part rules, another part is ruled.

Above all, there is the division of things into opposites. Aristotle says, "Everything is opposites or comes from opposites".²³ When he looks at justice, he looks at injustice. More than this, he looks at all the contradictory things "justice" means. "The quantity of words is limited," he says. "The number of things is not limited. Words must mean more than one thing."²⁴

Many of Aristotle's most important insights are comments about the contradictory nature of words. If we have to find a message in his works it is that we understand what is said by ourselves and others, only until we try to explain it, and then we do not. Aristotle's central observation about "justice" is the brilliant observation that what is "just" is what is "equal" (isos), but "equal" means two opposite things. If Milo the wrestler gets the same amount of food as everyone else, he gets "equal" and "not equal".

There is an old dispute about whether Aristotle is talking about words or things. As W. and K. Neale say,

it is unclear whether Aristotle is classifying symbols or what they symbolize, words, or, in a very wide sense, things. This is a question which has exercised commentators since ancient times.²⁵

I think Aristotle is talking about words. He does say some straightforward, practical things that are not about words, for instance that cities should slope downward to the east,²⁶ that pregnant women should have exercise and eat a good diet,²⁷ that infants should drink milk, not wine.²⁸ But most of the time, Aristotle is not talking about how things are or how they should be; he is talking about how we say they are.

Logos, words and the thinking that lies behind them, is central for Aristotle. As Woodbridge says, Aristotle "takes language seriously ... He sees in it well nigh the most important event in the world."²⁹ Some French and German scholars read Aristotle as talking about words, but the tradition in English scholarship is not to read him that way. Even though he says expressly that he is talking about the contrary ways the word "cause" is used, most English scholars take what Aristotle says about cause to be about cause, not the ways the word "cause" is used. The ways the word "cause" is used do reflect what we think about cause, but to talk about the ways the word "cause" is used is not to talk directly about how things are caused. It is to talk about what we say about it and how we think about it.

J. L. Ackrill has written a fine commentary on Categories in which he says "the categories classify things, not words,"³⁰ but notice that even Ackrill feels it is necessary to say this. Even he thinks one can make the mistake of thinking Aristotle is talking about words. This is because

though the items in categories are not expressions but 'things', the identification and classification of these things could, of course, be achieved only by attention to what we say.³¹

Whether Aristotle is talking about things or not, he looks at how we use words. He has what Woodbridge calls a "consciousness of language". This is glaringly obvious in some places in his works, for instance, Book V of Metaphysics, where he examines the meaning of one word after another: "beginning," "cause," "element," "nature," "necessary," "one," "being," "substance," "the same," "opposite," "before," "after," "power," "how much," "how," "toward what," "completed," "limit," "in virtue of which," "placement," "habit," "be effected by," "deprivation," "to have," "from something," "part," "whole," "race," "false," "accident."

That Aristotle is talking about words is also obvious in his concern for classification and definition and in his logic, which is about how the words "all," "some" and "not" should be used.

Aristotle's logic is about propositions - what can be said and the important differences between propositions were those marked by the occurrence of the negative particle and by the quantifiers 'all' and 'some'.³²

More than that, Aristotle says that what it means to "know" something is to say it in the right way. For instance, we could say the angles of "an isosceles triangle are equal to two right angles," but it doesn't matter whether a triangle is isosceles or not, any more than it matters whether it is made of bronze. The angles of all triangles are equal to two right angles. If we don't say things properly, Aristotle says, we don't know them.³³ Knowledge is seeing what is obviously so and explaining why it is so.³⁴ The why of things (the dio ti) is always a matter of words.

Non-English scholars are more aware of Aristotle's concern with logos than English ones. For instance, when U. Eco, looks at what Aristotle says about "being," he sees that:

... being is something that is said ... it becomes a philosophical problem only when we talk about it ... being manifests itself to us right from the outset as an effect of language.³⁵

If there is any central theme in Aristotle's works, it is, as he says explicitly in Topics, that all words have meanings that are contrary to each other.³⁶ This is not obvious in Problemata. Aristotle's questions seem to be about things rather words, but questions must be asked in words and answered in words. Philosophy starts and ends with what we say.

More problemata

The questions in Problemata contain no hint of a systematic "philosophy". They are clearly a jumble. There are questions about everything: getting tired, lying down and standing up, getting cold, having bruises. Problemata has physical questions and questions that are not physical, at least not in the same way. There are questions about the voice. Why do men hear less when they are yawning? Why does the tongue tremble when people are afraid? Why are humans the only creature to stutter? There are questions about smells. Why do we smell less when it's cold? Why is the armpit the worst smelling place? There are questions about mathematics. Why do all people, barbarians and Greeks, count in tens rather than any other number?

There are questions about living things and non-living things. Why are bubbles hemispheres? Why do things always get round on the edges? There are questions about the love of learning. Why is it that some books put you to sleep against your will while some keep you awake against your will? There are questions about music. Why do people who are sad and people who are happy like to hear music? Why do people get more pleasure from hearing a song they know than a song they don't know? There are questions about plants. Why are some vegetables eaten cooked and others raw? Why do we water plants in the morning, at night or in the evening? Why is it that only onions make your eyes sting? There are questions about bodies of water. Why don't the waves break³⁷ in deep open water but in small bodies or shallow ones?

There are questions about hot water. Why if you put your foot in hot water does it seem less hot if you hold it still and more hot if you move it? There are questions about air and wind, questions about fear and courage. Why do scared people tremble most in their voice, hands, and lower lip? Why when people are afraid do their bowels let go and they pee? There are questions about self-control. Why are there only two senses about which people are said to lack self-control, touch and taste? Why are self-control and good sense especially admired among the young and the rich, but justice especially among the poor? Why do people stifle their laughter less among people they know well?

There are questions about the eyes, the ears, the nose, and the mouth. Why when people get angry do their eyes get especially red, but when they are ashamed, their ears? Why is it that though both those who are short-sighted and those who are old suffer from weakness of vision, the first bring things closer when they want to see them and the second take them further away? There are questions about wisdom. Why from the beginning have there been prizes for physical contests, but none for wisdom?

Questions about justice

Along with everything else, Problemata has questions about justice. Because I am a law professor, these questions seem particularly important to me.

Why, if an injustice is greater when a greater good is hurt and honour is a thing that is a greater good, are injustices that have to do with money thought to be especially unjust?

This question is being asked by the whole world right now under the leadership in the United States of President Obama.

Why is making off with a deposit worse than making off with a loan?

How, if at all, is an oath different from a contract?

Why in some cases do jurors vote for the relatives rather than for what the will says?

Should legal cases always, never or sometimes be decided on technicalities, and if only sometimes, when?

Why is there more poverty among good people than bad ones?

This question breaks my heart, as do the three questions that follow it.

Why isn't doing a big injustice about money the same as doing a big injustice about something else? A person who would say a small thing might not tell a big secret, a person who would betray one person might not betray the whole polis, but a person who would steal an obol would steal a talent.

Why is it that human beings, despite their education are the most unjust animals?

Why is wealth to be found more often among those who are fouled up than among those who act properly?

These four questions make Aristotle sound quite radical in his politics but he is not. Aristotle is not systematic. There is no overall "philosophy" in his work. There are just questions and observations, some of which are impossible to understand.

Why is it considered more just to help the dead than the living?

I don't know what Aristotle means by this and I am not sure I understand what he means by the next question either.

Why is it that those who hang around with healthy people do not get healthier and those who hang around with strong or beautiful people do not get stronger or more beautiful, but those who hang around with people who are just, sensible, and good, become more just, more sensible and more good?

It seems to me that when you hang around with healthy people, you do get healthier and I'm not sure that you become more good when you hang around with good people, but the point of the questions, as I said, is not the answers to them or the facts behind them. The point of the questions is the questions. For instance,

Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?

Is it worse to kill a woman than a man? We seem to think it is. We say "women and children first" in a shipwreck, but why?

Why do they give a defendant the position on the right in a trial?

This question is totally different from all the preceding questions. It could only be about a particular legal system. There is no theoretical reason for a defendant to stand on the right. Or is there? Was this the practice in Athens? I don't think anyone knows.

The next question looks to be the same but is not. It is a question about the essence of law.

Why when the votes for the defendant and the accuser are the same, does the defendant win?

Burden of proof is the essence of law. Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who gets the burden of proof and how onerous is that burden? There are no other legal questions.³⁸

The final two questions seem as if they go back to being about a particular legal system, but it is hard to imagine what legal system they could be about.

Why, if someone steals something at the baths, the gym or the market is the punishment death, but if someone steals something from a house, it is twice the value of what was stolen?

Why for theft is the punishment death, but for aggravated assault, which is a bigger injustice, is there an evaluation of what must be suffered or paid?

Why indeed? If these were the law in Athens, why were they law? Why would any legal system make stealing from a bath more serious than stealing from a home? Why would it make theft more serious than assault?

Laughing at Aristotle

I have taken the questions about justice quite seriously but one of the most striking things about Problemata is how funny most of the questions are, and in this way Problemata is characteristically Aristotelian. Nearly every time I read Aristotle I wind up laughing at something he says. What he says is often so simple and so obvious.

It is easier to do anything, no matter what, than to do it correctly.³⁹

The cleaner ones clothes are the more readily they become stained.⁴⁰

Some people answer questions in their sleep. It seems you can be partly awake when you're fully asleep, just the way you can be partly asleep when you're fully awake.⁴¹

There's nothing to stop you from thinking you remember something you don't, but when you do remember something, you can't think you've forgotten it.⁴²

I have been laughing at Aristotle since the first time I read him, which seems to have been in 1960 when I was a freshman at Columbia College. I have no memory of this, but I still have the source books we used and on p. 288 I find that I underlined this text and put it in a box.

Thus a man would be considered a coward who was only as brave as a brave woman, and a woman as a chatterbox, who was only as modest as a good man.⁴³

Next to it in the margin I wrote "Ha! Ha!"

Aristotle also makes me laugh because he says he sees things no one could conceivably see.

Justice is better than music.⁴⁴

The number of flavours roughly equals the number of colours.⁴⁵

And finally, I laugh frivolously because I hear things Aristotle says in the voice of Mae West.

There can never be too many tall, good-looking men.⁴⁶

Two good men are always better than one.⁴⁷

---

^*Steve Wexler is a Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Steve has published extensively in the areas of poverty law, philosophy of law, and Greek philosophy.

¹ W.S. Hett, (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1936) p. vii.

² My view, that the questions in Problemata were written by Aristotle, is arrived at by applying to them the standard test scholars apply to determine whether a purportedly Aristotelian text is by Aristotle or not. They ask themselves "Is it brilliant?"

I have perforce to refer frequently to the Constitution of Athens (Athenaion Politeia), a work ascribed in antiquity to Aristotle. Some moderns are prepared to accept it as a genuine work from that master's pen; but I align myself firmly alongside those who cannot accept it as a product of Aristotle's rare genius, and attribute it instead to a much less gifted pupil.

D. Stockton, The Classical Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) p.2

³ It is ironic that all of Aristotle's published works should have disappeared, while none of Plato's published work was lost. We seem to have everything that Plato published.

⁴ Politics, II, 11, 1273b 1-3.

⁵ Aristotle's Vision of the Soul (Columbia, 1965) p. 28. Woodbridge is the scholar whose way of reading Aristotle is most like mine.

⁶ Ibid. p. 16.

7 Rhetoric, 2.13.4

8 Woodbridge, op. cit. supra. n. 5. p 106

⁹ This book, Peri Hermêneias, is usually called On Interpretation or Dei Interpretatione or Dei Int. I call it About Translating. Hermêneias comes from Hermês (the messenger god). In Xenophon's war stories, when a city is conquered, a hermês translates between the conquerors and the conquered. I would happily settle for About Communicating or About Getting the Message Across as a translation for Peri Hermêneias.

¹⁰ About Translating, ix, 18b 16-17.

¹¹ Ibid. at 19a 19-20.

¹² Ibid. at 19b 37-38.

¹³ Metaphysics, II., 993a 30.

¹⁴ Ethics, IX. Xii, 1169a 35.

¹⁵ On Life, (usually called De Anima) II. iv, 416b 7 and III. ii, 426 a 17.

¹⁶ Politics, I. v-vi, 1255a 1-4.

¹⁷ Metaphysics, I.x, 993a 13-15.

¹⁸ De Finibus V. iv (Rackham, trans. Harvard, 1931)

¹⁹ E.g. J.A.K. Thomson, The Ethics of Aristotle, (Penguin, 1953) p. 13 and E. Barker The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (Dover, 1959) p. 65.

²⁰ The closest I have seen to a recognition that Aristotle may not have given lectures is in E. Barker, The Politics of Aristotle, (Oxford, 1946). "[T]he actual lectures may have been more in the nature of discussion with members of the class." p. xxxv.

²¹ Sophistical Refutations XVI., 175a 11.

²² One question that comes up everywhere in Aristotle's works is whether something is meaningful or merely coincidental. That the first problemata are medical may be meaningful because Aristotle's father was a physician. Nicomachus must have kept notes of his practice. Maybe he passed these notes, complete with the notes of his father and his father before him, onto Aristotle. These could be the basis for some of the medical questions in Problemata.

²³ Metaphysics, IV. ii, 1005a 4. The Greek word could be translated as "opposites" or "contraries". The contrarity of language comes up quite often in Metaphysics, e.g. IX. i, 1046 b 5-11 and X. i, 1052b 27. At Physics, I. v, 188b 25, Aristotle repeats that "everything that comes in nature is opposites or from opposites" and at I. v, 189a 10, he says "it appears that the beginnings must be contraries".

²⁴ Sophistical Refutations, I., 165a 11-12

²⁵ W. Neale, K. Neale, The Development of Logic, (Oxford, 1962) p. 25.

²⁶ Politics, VII, 11, 1330a 40. (H. Rackham (Harvard, Loeb, 1932), numbers the chapters differently and makes this VII, x.)

²⁷ Politics, VII. 16, 1335b 13. (Rackham, VII, 14)

²⁸ Politics, VII, 17, 1336a 8 (Rackham, VII.xv.)

²⁹ P 24.

³⁰ J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories (Oxford, 1963) p, 71

³¹ Ibid, p. 78.

³² W. Neale, K. Neale, The Development of Logic, (Oxford, 1962) p. 31.

³³ Posterior Analytics, I. iv-v., 73b 37, 74a 17, 74b 1.

³⁴ Posterior Analytics, II. viii, 93a 14-21.

³⁵ Kant and the Platypus (1997, English trans. A. McEwen, Harcourt Brace, 2000) p. 22. L. Wittgenstein says,

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us. The Blue and Brown Books (Harper, 1958) p. 27

³⁶ 140a 20.

³⁷ The Greek word επιγελω (eh pee ghe lo) means "sparkle" and "laugh."

³⁸ See. S. Wexler, Burden of Proof Writ Large, 33 UBC L.R. 75, 80 (1999).

³⁹ Topics, 139b 8-9.

⁴⁰ Parva Naturalia, 460a 13.

⁴¹ Parva Naturalia, 462a.

⁴² Parva Naturalia, 452b 25.

⁴³ Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West, Vol. 1 (Columbia University Press, 1960). Translation of Aristotle Politics Bk III, ch. 4 by J.E. C. Welldon (London, 1883).

⁴⁴ Rhetoric 2.9.11.

⁴⁵ Parva Naturalia 442a 20.

⁴⁶ Politics 1290 b.

⁴⁷ Politics III. 16, 1287b 13.

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