Hoisted from Comments: Thinking About Aristotle of Stagira and Moses Finley
Scott Martens writes:
Hoisted from the Archives: Thinking About Aristotle of Stagira and Moses Finley: You have to see this in the light of the rest of Aristotle. Consider his notion of science -- under the label "episteme" -- what he considers the highest form of human knowledge:
The nature of Scientific Knowledge (employing the term in its exact sense and disregarding its analogous uses) may be made clear as follows. We all conceive that a thing which we know scientifically cannot vary; when a thing that can vary is beyond the range of our observation, we do not know whether it exists or not. An object of Scientific Knowledge, therefore, exists of necessity. It is therefore eternal, for everything existing of absolute necessity is eternal; and what is eternal does not come into existence or perish.
His idea of science is totally non-empirical. It consists solely of principles of logic and mathematics, and not even all of those. The dirty business of thinking about things that actually are is relegated at best to second class human knowledge: tekhne, or perhaps phronesis or sophia -- art of making things and strategies for doing things, or sometimes simply good ideas; and at worst to mere doxa or to enthymemes - hardly more than rank prejudice and rules of thumb. He does not deem it appropriate for a seeker of truth to dwell much on the dirty business of real stuff.
This attitude comes through just as strongly from Plato and his whole theology of Forms. It's a major player in Hellenic thought. It figures strongly in Christianity as the rejection of "worldly things." You can see it in the Physiocrats who saw industry and commerce as parasitic on agriculture and government. It has parallels in China with its historical love-hate relationship with trade and commerce.
There ain't much more worldly than the pursuit of survival through labour and wealth through trade.
