Categories and On Interpretation

Introduction

These two short treatises open the Organon, Aristotle's works on logic, and for two thousand years they were the first books every student of philosophy read. The Categories divides everything that can be said into ten categories, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time and the rest, and gives its famous account of primary substance. On Interpretation analyses nouns, verbs and propositions, affirmation and denial, contradiction and contrariety, and raises the puzzle of future contingents: will there or will there not be a sea battle tomorrow?