Page - 188 - in The Complete Aristotle

A further point worth investigating is how many ways of proving the same conclusion can be obtained by varying the figure, 30 There is no knowledge by demonstration of chance conjunctions; for chance conjunctions exist neither by necessity nor as general connexions but comprise what comes to be as something distinct from these. Now demonstration is concerned only with one or other of these two; for all reasoning proceeds from necessary or general premisses, the conclusion being necessary if the premisses are necessary and general if the premisses are general. Consequently, if chance conjunctions are neither general nor necessary, they are not demonstrable. 31 Scientific knowledge is not possible through the act of perception. Even if perception as a faculty is of ‘the such’ and not merely of a ‘this somewhat’, yet one must at any rate actually perceive a ‘this somewhat’, and at a definite present place and time: but that which is commensurately universal and true in all cases one cannot perceive, since it is not ‘this’ and it is not ‘now’; if it were, it would not be commensurately universal-the term we apply to what is always and everywhere. Seeing, therefore, that demonstrations are commensurately universal and universals imperceptible, we clearly cannot obtain scientific knowledge by the act of perception: nay, it is obvious that even if it were possible to perceive that a triangle has its angles equal to two right angles, we should still be looking for a demonstration-we should not (as some say) possess knowledge of it; for perception must be of a particular, whereas scientific knowledge involves the recognition of the commensurate universal. So if we were on the moon, and saw the earth shutting out the sun’s light, we should not know the cause of the eclipse: we should perceive the present fact of the eclipse, but not the reasoned fact at all, since the act of perception is not of the commensurate universal. I do not, of course, deny that by watching the frequent recurrence of this event we might, after tracking the commensurate universal, possess a demonstration, for the commensurate universal is elicited from the several groups of singulars. The commensurate universal is precious because it makes clear the cause; so that in the case of facts like these which have a cause other than themselves universal knowledge is more precious than sense-perceptions and than intuition. (As regards primary truths there is of course a different account to be given.) Hence it is clear that knowledge of things demonstrable cannot be 188