Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics

Introduction

This volume brings together the remaining main parts of Aristotle's Organon. The Prior Analytics creates the theory of the syllogism, the first system of formal logic in history, scarcely surpassed for more than two thousand years. The Posterior Analytics examines the nature of scientific knowledge and shows how demonstration proceeds from first principles that cannot themselves be proved. The Topics is a handbook of dialectic, teaching how to argue on any question from accepted opinions. Together they laid the foundations of European university education and of scientific method.