Inquiry and Meno’s Paradox in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics B 8

Abstract

This paper discusses some issues about Aristotle’s theory of scientificinvestigation in Posterior Analytics II 8. Aristotle says that scientific investigationcomes in three stages. My point is that Aristotle’s theory of scientific investigation cannot avoid Meno’s paradox – the paradox about the impossibility ofwhatsoever sort of investigation – unless its second stage, the stage in which oneestablishes that an object exists, is understood in terms of establishing that theobject is a legitimate explanandum in the domain of a given science.