Aristotle Quotes on Knowledge
Aristotle's Posterior Analytics gives the founding theory of demonstrative knowledge (epistēmē): we have scientific knowledge of a thing when we grasp the cause through which it necessarily holds, and when we understand that this cause is the cause. Demonstration proceeds from prior, better-known, necessary first principles through valid syllogism to the conclusion. The first principles themselves cannot be demonstrated without infinite regress and so must be grasped by intellectual insight (nous) — a doctrine that frames the entire Aristotelian conception of science and that the medieval scholastics inherited intact.
Quotes
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“All men by nature desire to know.”
Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10 -
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers -
“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history, for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular.”
διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον λέγει. -
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Education is the best provision for old age.”
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“My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.”
Letter to Alexander the Great as quoted by William Whewell , History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), Ch. 2, Sect. 2 -
“Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected . To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.”
1b25-2a10; J. L. Ackrill (tr.), 1984-1995 -
“1b25-2a10; J. L. Ackrill (tr.), 1984-1995”
Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected . To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the mark -
“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”
I.13 , 78a.22 -
“Also known as Occam's razor or the principle of parsimony / economy ( lex parsimoniae )”
We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum . The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is -
“We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum . The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is ”
Richard McKeon (tr.) (1963), p. 150