From Aristotelian Substances to Newtonian Mechanisms: The Rise of Modern Science

Aristotle spent most of his time observing the world around him, and grouping the things he observed into categorical hierarchies. The techniques he developed for categorizing observable items are still in use, not only in science, but in almost every organized activity in the modern civilized world. If you go into a library or a hardware store, you will only be able to find what you want because the books and the hardware are organized using some variation on Aristotle’s categories. Most search engines are able to work at a usable speed only because they divide the information on the web into something like Aristotelian categories.

But although Aristotle’s categories are necessary for modern science, they are not sufficient. Godfrey-Smith speaks of a kind of inductive reasoning he calls explanatory inference, in which a scientist infers the existence of something she can’t see that could explain what she does see. Aristotle‘s method of enumerative induction could get you from the observation of numerous black crows to the categorical claim “all crows are black.” But it will never get you to the claim “all crows are made of electrons” no matter how many crows you see. Aristotle had no use for that kind of thinking. It would have reminded him too much of the speculations that Plato was so fond of.

Consequently, although Aristotelian natural science was often full of detailed descriptions, it often provided very few explanations. The French playwright…