Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 28 It is often assumed that each academic discipline possesses its own distinct subject matter. This assumption is misleading. The boundaries separating disciplines frequently reflect differences in conceptual vocabulary, explanatory emphasis, and historical development rather than fundamentally different domains of reality. The same phenomenon may therefore beContinue reading “Excursus 124 – On the Relationship Between Disciplines and Their Subject Matter”
Tag Archives: Aristotle
Excursus 115 – On Reading Earlier Philosophers Through Later Traditions
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 08 Throughout the history of ideas, later intellectual traditions have frequently interpreted earlier thinkers through conceptual frameworks that arose only afterwards. Such reinterpretations may illuminate genuine continuities, but they may also obscure important differences by attributing to earlier authors concepts, intentions, or doctrines that belong primarily toContinue reading “Excursus 115 – On Reading Earlier Philosophers Through Later Traditions”
Excursus 110 – On the Meaning of Contradiction
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 22 The term contradiction has acquired different meanings in different philosophical traditions. Unless these meanings are distinguished, discussions of dialectic and philosophical method can easily become confused. In formal logic, a contradiction is stronger than a mere opposition or distinction. Two propositions are contradictory when they cannotContinue reading “Excursus 110 – On the Meaning of Contradiction”
Excursus 106 – Platonic and Aristotelian Essentialism in the Light of Continuous Variation
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 20 Modern discussions of essentialism often blur an important distinction between Plato and Aristotle. Although both philosophers are commonly described as essentialists, they understood the location and nature of essences in fundamentally different ways. For Plato, the essence of a thing does not belong to the individualContinue reading “Excursus 106 – Platonic and Aristotelian Essentialism in the Light of Continuous Variation”
Excursus 071 – On Intellectual Traditions as Evolving Populations
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 19 Historical influence should not be confused with direct textual transmission. The doctrines associated with major thinkers seldom reach later generations solely through the original texts. More often they are transmitted through successive generations of interpretation, teaching, commentary, translation, adaptation, and institutional practice. As a result, theContinue reading “Excursus 071 – On Intellectual Traditions as Evolving Populations”
Excursus 047 – On the Growth of Fields of Expertise
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 18 The history of knowledge is, in large measure, the history of intellectual differentiation. In antiquity, philosophy (philosophia) embraced nearly every systematic inquiry into nature, humanity, and society. Aristotle’s division of knowledge into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences established a broad framework from which later disciplines graduallyContinue reading “Excursus 047 – On the Growth of Fields of Expertise”
Excursus 027 – On Teleology
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30 In Aristotle’s philosophy, the final cause (causa finalis) referred to the end, purpose, or goal for which a thing existed. Together with the material, formal, and efficient causes, it formed one of the four fundamental modes of explanation in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Francis Bacon rejected theContinue reading “Excursus 027 – On Teleology”
Excursus 014 – On Dualism
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30 The appearance of paired opposites in Bacon’s examples (“hot/cold,” “white/black”) should not be taken as evidence of a dualistic worldview. These pairs were part of the inherited scientific and rhetorical vocabulary of his time—convenient, vivid, and pedagogically familiar—but not philosophically binding. Bacon’s underlying physics was continuist,Continue reading “Excursus 014 – On Dualism”
Excursus 011 – On the Concept of Species
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30 In Aristotelian logic, the species infimae (“lowest species”) occupied the final level of the genus–species hierarchy—the most specific universals that could still apply to more than one individual. They marked the boundary between universal and particular, serving as the lowest kinds that could figure in scientificContinue reading “Excursus 011 – On the Concept of Species”
Excursus 010 – On Induction: One Word, Several Meanings
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 06 – 30 The first explicit use of the term inductio in the aphoristic sequence of the Novum Organum marks a structural and methodological transition. Bacon moves from diagnosing the corruption of notions to proposing the methodological alternative on which the Instauratio depends. To avoid attributing later developments toContinue reading “Excursus 010 – On Induction: One Word, Several Meanings”
Hossein Jorjani 