54

Logic 54

Aristotle's Organon

The Organon of Aristotle the title which the collection of his logical treatise recieved probably at the hands of Andronicles the Rhodian who put them together about 60 B.C. * opens with a metaphysical book the Categories or Predicaments although in that same treatise Aristotle evidently bases the metaphysics upon a grammatico-logical analysis of the Greek sentence.
To this book was usually prefixed the treatise of Porphry on the Predicables.
About half the scholastic works on logic are commentaries an the collection of books so formed. These works therefore base logic on metaphysics to some extent.

*'Organon' was first the name of the science given to it by the only Peripathetics because logic did not satisfy Aristotle's definitions either of Science or of Art.
I fully accept the usual story about Aristotle's wrotongs lying some centuries perdus until they were rescued and put in order first by Apellicon and later by Andronicus.
I consider the rejection of this story and consequent partial refusial to assist the authortication of Aristotle's works as we have them in German theory thank God but defended in English in "Richard Shute's" book one od the extravagancies of 'higher criticism.'