Although it is one of Aristotle's most technical and abstract works, the Posterior Analytics (APo) is receiving unceasing attention from interpreters. Its importance as a key to the philosophical and scientific method of Aristotle's works is now rarely denied, and some of the philosophical issues raised by its logic and epistemology are intensely debated. Over the years, its volcanic soil has nourished a variety of beautiful scholarly flowers. David Bronstein's book is the latest, and one of the best.
This very ambitious book aims to reconstruct the doctrine of the APo as a “grand theory of inquiry” in which every aspect of the acquisition of a science—noetic knowledge of first principles included—is fully accounted for and defended as plausible. Bronstein's leading idea is that, in developing his views on teaching, inquiry, and discovery, Aristotle was deeply influenced by Meno's Paradox, the argument to the effect that inquiry is...
