On the Development of Aristotle’s Ideas of Scientific Method and the Structure of Science

Abstract

Aristotle's early methodology was an interrogative one modelled on the Socratic "elenchus". His strategic interest led him to study answers that are necessitated by earlier ones. This study became his syllogistic logic, which is thus still a part of the general theory of interrogative inquiry. However, the syllogistic methodology was by itself too narrow to cope with the problems of change or the special role of the widest premises of a science. Aristotle dealt with the latter by his idea that existence assumptions trickle down in a series of syllogisms from wider to narrower terms.