

"The ancient Greeks weren't trying to be us." - asciilifeform
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GreeksWrong.HTM

======
foldr
This is a pretty crappy article. Aristotle was empirically wrong about a bunch
of stuff, but he was also one of the greatest minds in history. If you think
he's committing "elementary fallacies" every other page, then you're probably
just misinterpreting his arguments (as I think the author does in the case of
the concept of body). I mean, even our notion of what constitutes a logical
fallacy comes in good part from his foundational work on logic.

The author is also a bit ignorant generally of philosophical issues. For
example, he bluntly states that "refutability is one of the classic
determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific", ignoring the fact
that (a) it has always been a minority of philosophers of science who have
taken this Popperian position and (b) that defining what is actually meant by
refutability in this context turns out to be a hugely difficult problem.
(Popper never quite sorted it out.) He also has an annoying habit of
committing the "elementary philosophical mistake" of referring to false
hypotheses as "fallacious" (a term which is of course restricted in
application to arguments).

I guess I am too easily upset by all this, and I think that Aristotle should
be open to criticism like anyone else. But you can't get anything out of
ancient philosophy unless you're willing to set aside your 21st century
superiority complex for a little while and make a close study of the text,
bearing in mind that the author (at least in this case) is not an idiot. If
all you are going to do is point out that (gasp!) some of his conclusions were
wrong, then what can be the point of the exercise?

I hope someone does the same to this guy's work in 2000 years.

