Organon

The Organon (Greek ὄργανον "tool" ) is a collection of writings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In them, Aristotle describes the art of logic as a tool of science. The Organon consists of six individual fonts that are believed to have been compiled not by Aristotle himself, but by Byzantine scholars who also gave the name of the collection in this form.

Title and question after compilation

Neither the title of the Organon nor the arrangement of the fonts included are from Aristotle, and the order of the books is not chronological. Also factual compilation is problematic: It is based on the post-Aristotelian division into, Doctrine of the Notion ',' theory of judgment 'and' doctrine of the final ' basis. But there are two independent doctrines of the circuit ' ( in the topic and in the Posterior Analytics ), which also both require no doctrine of the judgment or of the concept. Also missing is the Organon - closely linked to the Topics - rhetoric.

Nevertheless, the compilation has a certain justification. All fonts used treat at least partly logical topics ( in a broad sense ). The important form -matter distinction they do not know them all. There you will find each other some references between some of these writings. Above all, they can all settle outside the Aristotelian science system and characterized as methodologically and propaedeutic, although it does not do that to a mere tool, but their contents are also the subject of philosophy.

The range of topics covers from today's perspective, the disciplines of philosophy of language, grammar, logic, philosophy of science and ontology. So De treated interpretatione philosophy of language, logic and grammatical problems and the categories do not seem to explicitly distinguish between things of relations between words.

Content

The six books of the Organon describe how human knowledge can be divided into different fields and developed them using logical conclusions from observations on. For this purpose, Aristotle teaches, among other things, how to derive evidence to prove and can check.

The topics are divided in to six books:

In most editions of the Organon is since ancient time writing an introduction of Porphyry, a kind of preface to the first book "categories" involved.