commissioner.org  


Aristotle on intuition
Source Autoplectic
Date 06/01/17/20:30

"THUS IT IS CLEAR that we must get to know the primary premisses by
induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the
universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp
truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error-opinion, for
instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition
are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is
more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premisses are
more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is
discursive. From these considerations it follows that there will be no
scientific knowledge of the primary premisses, and since except
intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be
intuition that apprehends the primary premisses-a result which also
follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative
source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of
scientific knowledge.If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true
thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative
source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science
grasps the original basic premiss, while science as a whole is
similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact."
[Aristotle, Posterior Analytics]

[View the list]


InternetBoard v1.0
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho