belief in matter of matters or the prime matter is one of the earliest human beliefs in the field of philosophical thinking. from among the muslim philosophers, the peripatetics have confirmed it and come up with certain arguments; however, some others have not accepted it. in this article, it is tried to critically review the arguments on proving the prime matter and the objections that muslim...

by considering as incomplete the peripatetics’ method in achieving reality, shaykh ishrāq (suhrawardī) has chosen the method of insight and intuition. but what position do thought and proof have in his method? it is implied from some of his statements that thinking and proof have no place in his method and some of his other statements imply the opposite. one of the solutions of this apparent in...

As Fontenelle observed in his eloge of Newton, the great man had not only not made his case, but had said of the unknown cause of gravity and its manifest effects precisely what the peripatetics said of occult qualities. These comments are offered as a gesture against the fad that ascribes to "magic" or "the magical tradition" whatever in the natural philosophy of the scientific revolution is n...

'Aristotelian logic', as it was taught from late antiquity until the 20th century, commonly included a short presentation of the argument forms modus (ponendo) ponens, modus (tollendo) tollens, modus ponendo tollens, and modus tollendo ponens. In late antiquity, arguments of these forms were generally classified as 'hypothetical syllogisms'. However, Aristotle did not discuss such arguments, no...

Thomas Reid (1710-1796) offers an under-appreciated account of the primary/secondary quality distinction. He gives sound reasons for rejecting the views of Locke, Boyle, Galileo and others, and presents a better alternative, according to which the distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. Primary qualities, for Reid, are qualities whose intrinsic natures can be known through sensation....

The mismatch between common representations of “science” and the miscellany of materials typically studied by the historian of science is traced to a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy came to be rearticulated (most famously by Francis Bacon) as involving both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting te...