The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal

by James Franklin

These passages on induction give substance to the Enlightenment picture of Aristotle as the father of the old order and the prime obstacle in the way of the rise of experimental science. In life Aristotle was a genuine experimenter and observer, especially in biology. In fact he notices that the ideas of rhetorical probability can apply to argument in biology: he remarks on the reasons for thinking that semen comes from all parts of the body: “These opinions are made probable by the witness of such facts as that children are born with a likeness to their parents, not only in congenital but also in acquired characteristics.”52 But the Aristotle of the logical works, as taught in the schools and universities of medieval Europe, was indeed a supporter of the view that pure thought is the method of science, not “argument from examples.”