The Posterior Analytics contains Aristotle's philosophy of science. In Book 2, Aristotle asks how the scientist discovers what sort of loss of light constitutes lunar eclipse. The scientist has to discover that the moon's darkening is due to the earth's shadow. Once that defining explanation is known the scientist possesses the full scientific concept of lunar eclipse and can use it to explain other necessary features of the phenomenon. The present commentary, arguably ascribed to Philoponus incorrectly, offers some interpretations of Aristotle that are unfamiliar nowadays. For...

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements of logical validity and explanatoriness which he first formulated. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of...