The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

Tisias coming next after the
first founders, then Thrasymachus after Tisias, and Theodorus next
to him, while several people have made their several contributions
to it: and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the art has
attained considerable dimensions. Of this inquiry, on the other
hand, it was not the case that part of the work had been thoroughly
done before, while part had not. Nothing existed at all. For the
training given by the paid professors of contentious arguments was
like the treatment of the matter by Gorgias. For they used to hand
out speeches to be learned by heart, some rhetorical, others in the
form of question and answer, each side supposing that their
arguments on either side generally fall among them. And therefore
the teaching they gave their pupils was ready but rough. For they
used to suppose that they trained people by imparting to them not
the art but its products, as though any one professing that he
would impart a form of knowledge to obviate any pain in the feet,
were then not to teach a man the art of shoe-making or the sources
whence he can acquire anything of the kind, but were to present him
with several kinds of shoes of all sorts: for he has helped him to
meet his need, but has not imparted an art to him. Moreover, on the
subject of Rhetoric there exists much that has been said long ago,
whereas on the subject of reasoning we had nothing else of an
earlier date to speak of at all, but were kept at work for a long
time in experimental researches. If, then, it seems to you after
inspection that, such being the situation as it existed at the
start, our investigation is in a satisfactory condition compared
with the other inquiries that have been developed by tradition,
there must remain for all of you, or for our students, the task of
extending us your pardon for the shortcomings of the inquiry, and
for the discoveries thereof your warm thanks.

Part 2
Universal Physics

Physics, Book I
    Translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye
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1
    When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have
principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance
with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is
attained. For we do not think that we know a thing until we are
acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and
have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly
therefore in the science of Nature, as in other branches of study,
our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its
principles.
    The natural way of doing this is to start from the things which
are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which
are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are
not ‘knowable relatively to us’ and ‘knowable’ without
qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method
and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us,
towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature.
    Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused
masses, the elements and principles of which become known to us
later by analysis. Thus we must advance from generalities to
particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to
sense-perception, and a generality is a kind of whole,
comprehending many things within it, like parts. Much the same
thing happens in the relation of the name to the formula. A name,
e.g. ‘round’, means vaguely a sort of whole: its definition
analyses this into its particular senses. Similarly a child begins
by calling all men ‘father’, and all women ‘mother’, but later on
distinguishes each of them.
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2
    The principles in question must be either (a) one or (b) more
than one. If (a) one, it must be either (i) motionless, as
Parmenides and Melissus assert, or (ii) in motion, as the
physicists hold, some declaring air to be the first principle,
others water. If (b) more than one, then either (i) a finite or
(ii) an infinite plurality. If (i) finite (but more than one), then
either two or three or four or some other number. If (ii) infinite,
then either as Democritus believed one in kind, but differing in
shape or form; or different in kind and even contrary.
    A similar inquiry is made by those who inquire into the number
of existents: for they inquire whether the ultimate constituents of
existing things are one or many, and if many, whether a finite