Aristotle was the first philosopher to provide a theory of autonomous scientific disciplines and the systematic connections between those disciplines. This book presents the first comprehensive treatment of these systematic connections: analogy, focality, and cumulation.

Wilson appeals to these systematic connections in order to reconcile Aristotle's narrow theory of the subject-genus (described in the Posterior Analytics in terms of essential definitional connections among terms) with the more expansive conception found in Aristotle's scientific practice. These connections, all...