170 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters . 
Admitting, provisionally, the absurdities of Aristotle and his school, 
cheerfully granting the necessity of verification of all deductive infer¬ 
ences, yet I have reason to maintain that that a priori road, where every 
concept is rigidly defined, and primary truths are analyzed, truths abso¬ 
lutely unassailable, has proved suggestive of observations, fruitful in in¬ 
ferences which might have been verified, but which have been very slowly 
reached, and only as hypotheses, by the empirical route.* The inquiry, it 
seems to me, is not unpromising; the result may appear in a re examina¬ 
tion of Aristotle’s Physike Akroasis. 
At a first glance, one is impressed by the glaring difference between this 
treatise and, modern works bearing similar titles. It is not merely that 
Aristotle cites some observations, so-called, which were reported to him, or 
which he himself noted with very inaccurate observation; for the same 
thing has happened since his time. Thus one of our chief contemporary 
authorities in natural science, cites certain facts, so-called, which were 
privately confessed to me, many years ago, to be sheer imposture, and are 
now publicly so acknowledged. (M. & K. Fox.) 
But, setting this aside, one sees in a modern treatise the attempt, at 
least, to follow a strictly empirical method, and to attain higher and higher 
generalizations by careful inductions. In the Physike Akroasis the aim is 
to clear up those primary concepts which underlie all physical investiga¬ 
tions, and to make strict logical deduction fiom certain primary principles, 
however those may have been obtained, which have the most absolute and 
intuitive certainty. 
This difference is of course largely due to the fact that Aristotle is aim- 
ing at the philosophy of physics; to secure clear concepts and precise defin¬ 
itions, to determine (I. 1,) the principles, causes and elements concerned in 
nature. 
Aristotle first (I. 1) indicates his method, which is to proceed from what 
is more familiar as coming under the observation of the senses, to what is 
more fundamental, to elements, causes and principles. I suppose that we 
must not call this “ Baconian induction,” but rather analysis. That which 
is primarily given to us in knowledge is complex; we analyze it, using also 
logical induction in order to reach remoter, but higher principles. Verifi¬ 
cation would of course supplement this method, but our author makes very 
imperfect use of that. 
Physics, in its widest sense, embraces all the sciences of nature. What 
Grove, in the preface to his “ Correlation, etc.,” claims what is expressed by his title as 
the latest and grandest discovery in physics. We will not dispute his assertion, if he means 
experimental physics. But inasmuch as Aristotle maintains that all change in nature (and 
nature is that world of beings whose characteristic mark is change, II, 1; III. 1,) is reduc¬ 
ible to local motion, and gives clear demonstration of his proposition, Grove’s assertion, 
taken in its widest sense, seems hardly warranted by the facts. On the contrary, the a 
priori method ought to have pointed out, in this case as in others, the road for experiment, 
by giving anticipations from something more than “scientific imagination ” of the results 
which might be expected. 
