Abstract
The term ‘aporia’ (perplexity, impasse, obstacle, doubt, puzzle) is frequent throughout Aristotle's works. This essay summarises Aristotle's explicit accounts of aporia, then explores the various roles it plays in his inquiries into nature. There follow some suggestions about ways in which study of current establishment and pursuit of scientific agendas might profit from reflection on the diverse modes and functions of perplexity. The final section reflects on the Aristotelian link between perplexity and eudaimonia (wellbeing, self-fulfilment, blessedness).
Introduction
In the Loeb edition of Aristotle's Physics, in the introduction to Book 1, the translators remark that ‘noone knows better than Aristotle that it is half the battle to know what you want to get at and to “ask the right questions” about it’. 1 Yet only a fraction of the vast literature on Aristotle's methodology addresses the ways in which he sets up ‘the right questions’. 2
In the next section, I set the stage by considering Aristotle's explicit remarks in Topics and Metaphysics Beta on aporia, that is, perplexity. Section ‘Aristotle’s aporetic inquiries into nature’ explores the remarkable range of aporetic strategies by which Aristotle establishes his own agendas and advances his own quests for causes and definitions. My focus will be on works devoted to nature (phusis), in particular Physics, On the Heavens, Meteorologica, History of Animals, Parts of Animals and, especially, Generation of Animals. Aporetic functions to be found in these works include: critical assessment of reputable opinions (endoxa), especially those of predecessors wholly or partly at odds with his own; launching of his own arguments through dialectical examination of alternative views; focusing on questions suggestive of explanations; orderly generation of questions and sub-questions in the quest for definitions. Section ‘The status of Aristotle’s aporetics’ touches on the status of Aristotle's aporetic accounts: are they truthful narratives of his inquiries, or are they rather to be seen as persuasive and didactic devices?
Leaping forward to the present, in Section ‘Aporetics today’ I argue for the relevance of Aristotle's varied aporetic strategies to current issues in science studies. In the light of Aristotle's appeals to reputable opinions (endoxa) of predecessors and others, I mention ways in which modern scientists make use of the history of their disciplines, and I look at the issue of participation in the setting of current scientific agendas: by experts; by ‘citizen’ scientists; by ‘mavericks’. Prompted by questions about the accuracy of Aristotle's aporetic accounts, I glance at the controversial issue of the extent to which current scientific publications present actual procedures of inquiry rather than serving persuasive or didactic ends. Then I voice my own perplexity about the paucity of current literature on the roles of perplexity in the natural sciences.
In the final section, I note how aporia is for Aristotle the beginning of the road to the enjoyment of knowledge that is the highest form of eudaimonia (well-being), and I touch on some current problems related to this link.
Aporia and its cognates
‘Aporia’ derives from ‘aporos’ (without passage, impassable). In Aristotle's works it covers both states of mind – puzzlement, perplexity, uncertainty, doubt – and their objects – puzzles, perplexities, problems, uncertainties, dilemmas. 3
Despite Aristotle's extensive use of the term ‘aporia’ and its cognates, there are only a few passages that deal explicitly with its meaning and functions.
In Topics VI.6 he declares it a mistake to apply the term to the object of perplexity rather than the feeling itself.
4
And he adds that ‘when we are reasoning on both sides of a question and everything appears to have equal weight on either side, we are perplexed (aporoumen) which of the two courses we are to adopt’.
5
In Topics I.1 he links aporiai to dialectical problems posed by conflicting reputable opinions (endoxa): opinions that ‘commend themselves to all, or to the majority or to the wise – that is, to all of the wise or to the majority or to the most famous and distinguished of them’.
6
Such conflicts demand dialectical review, and he makes substantial claims for this dialectical approach. Thus in Topics I.2, after noting its usefulness in teaching and debate, he declares: For the philosophic sciences it is useful, because, if we are able to raise difficulties on both sides, we shall more easily discern both truth and falsehood on every point.
7
It is necessary, with respect to the science which we are seeking, for us first to go through the issues about which one must at first be perplexed (aporêsai). These are the ones about which some people have held different views, as well as anything else that has been overlooked. For those who wish to resolve perplexities (euporêsai), it is advantageous to go through perplexities (diaporêsai) thoroughly. For the subsequent resolution of perplexities (euporia) is the resolution (lusus) of the perplexities raised (aporoumenôn) previously.
8
He then proceeds to list the aporiai that he proposes to resolve.
As for the stages of aporetic inquiry set out at the start of Metaphysics Beta – posing (aporia), tackling (diaporia) and solving (euporia) problems – these clearly apply to many of Aristotle's inquiries into nature as presented by him.
Aristotle's aporetic inquiries into nature
In what follows my use of the term ‘aporetic’ covers questions that Aristotle explicitly denotes as aporiai along with some others whose solution he recognises as problematic. 10 In Aristotle's works on nature, taken by him to include all things that move and change, we find many different types of aporetic inquiries. 11
In considering aporetic strategies that may be regarded as dialectical, it is useful to distinguish those aimed at refutation (elenchos) of others’ opinions from those aimed at resolution (lusis) of objections to Aristotle's own opinions. 12 In the former Aristotle figures as the questioner challenging respondents’ theses; in the latter he is himself the respondent resolving arguments of questioners.
Clearly not aporetic are refutations in which Aristotle is scornfully dismissive. For example, in Meteorologica II.3 Democritus’ view that the sea is diminishing and will eventually disappear is rejected outright as ‘like something out of Aesop's fables’. 13 Similarly, in Generation of Animals III.5 fishermen are said, having failed to observe copulation of fishes, ‘to repeat the same old stupid tale that we find told in Herodotus the fable-teller to the effect that fish conceive by swallowing the milt’. 14
Where the issue is aporetic Aristotle's refutative arguments are generally more complex, arriving at conclusions only after spelling out unreasonable or unobserved consequences of his opponents’ views. For example, Generation of Animals III.10 is devoted to ‘the great aporia’ of bee generation. 15 Aristotle first runs critically through the opinions of others, including the view that bees gather their young from outside the hive and the claim that they are reproduced through copulation of drones with workers and workers with workers. 16 Against gathering of their young from outside the hive, he argues that if so they must be generated either spontaneously or by some other kind of animal; but both alternatives are absurd, the former because we do not observe bees spontaneously generated outside the hive, the latter because animal generation preserves kind. Against the view that bees are reproduced by copulation of drones with workers and workers with workers, he insists that this is impossible, given that mating requires a male and a female. But, given that males do not look after their young, workers can’t be male; and since no female has defensive organs, drones can’t be female. Only then does he present and defend his own tentative conclusion that bees generate spontaneously and hierarchically, with kings producing kings and workers, and workers producing workers and drones. 17 However, he goes on to concede that there is need for further observation, which may well yield facts requiring a theory of bee generation differing from his own. 18
Resolution (lusis) may also be achieved by showing that the problem faced rests upon a false presupposition. Notable instances are the resolutions of Zeno's paradoxes of motion in Physics VI.9, paradoxes that he describes as ‘posing difficulties (dyskolias) for those solving them’. 19 For example, the flying arrow paradox questions the very possibility of motion. For at any one instant, a ‘now’, it must be without motion. But if at every instant it is motionless, then it cannot move. Aristotle points out that this rests on the false presupposition that time is made up of discrete instants. 20
In addition to such refutative arguments there are ways in which Aristotle uses aporiai for the systematic advancement of his inquiries. These strategies, which have been called ‘zetetic’ (from zêtêsis, seeking), take many forms. 21
To start with, it should be noted that in his critical treatments of others’ opinions and arguments Aristotle does not always offer outright refutations or resolutions. 22 Instead, he often advances or modifies his own position by finding in them some partial truth. For example, in Generation of Animals II.1 he raises a problem concerning the role of semen in fashioning the parts of living beings: namely that what does so must be either outside or inside the semen; but, so he has himself already argued, both are impossible. 23 To resolve this, he provides a substantial argument to the effect that it is a false dichotomy, given that some external agency can activate what is internal to the foetus (kuema) in potentiality. 24
Given their inaccessibility to close observation, meteorological and celestial events are for Aristotle generally puzzling, often admitting only of uncertain explanations. 25 In his quests for such explanations, focusing of questions often plays a crucial role. 26 In Meteorologica I.6 and 7, for example, he first explores predecessors’ explanations of comets. 27 In his critique of these endoxa he introduces a range of observations at odds with them; and he progressively refines the issue, moving from the simple question of why some stars have ‘long hair’ to asking why long-haired stars differ in further ways from other heavenly bodies; for example, why unlike planets they often appear outside the zodiac. 28 This concentration on more specific phenomena prepares the way for Aristotle's own explanation of comets as dry exhalations from the earth that catch fire in the upper atmosphere and as fiery exhalations from planets and stars. 29 Following this explanation, Aristotle touches on the further issue, this time correlative rather than contrastive, of why the appearance of comets is a sign of coming wind and drought, maintaining that this is indicative of their fiery constitution. 30
In seeking definitions and explanations Aristotle makes frequent use of orderly generation of questions, both obvious and puzzling, through divisions (diaireseis) designed to reveal the order (taxis) of nature.
31
For example, in Physics IV.4 he sets out to tackle the difficulties (aporoumena) concerning the nature of place.
32
He proceeds to break down the question ‘What is place?’: For we may take it that it must be either the form or the matter of the body itself, or some kind of dimensional extension lying between the points of the containing surface, or – if there be no such “intervenient” apart from the bulk of the included body – the containing surface itself.
33
Numerous diaireseis, often complex, are to be found in Aristotle's biological works. 35 For example, in Parts of Animals III.6 he asserts that any kind of animal that has lungs is a land-dweller; but he goes on to note that all animals that breathe have lungs and that some water-dwellers, such as dolphins and whales, breathe. 36 To resolve this dilemma he offers a somewhat ad hoc solution, suggesting that these water-dwellers are of dual nature, being partly land-dwellers insofar as to cool themselves they need to breathe. 37 In History of Animals VIII.2, however, a more systematically presented solution is set out. Instead of starting, as in Parts of Animals, with a single division of animals into land-dwelling and water-dwelling, all animals are first divided by two criteria: means of cooling and nutritional requirement. The problem of the dolphins is now resolved: they are indeed sea-dwelling, but as for means of cooling they inhale and exhale air by means of lungs. 38
As noted above, Aristotle's examination of perplexities often fails to reach a definite conclusion. In Problemata physica nearly nine hundred questions concerning natural phenomena are raised, some left entirely open, others followed by one or more tentative indications of causes. 39 Aristotle does indeed make several references to his own work on problems (now lost), but Problemata physica is a later compilation. However, In Meteorologica I.13 he introduces a wide range of issues concerning winds, rivers and the sea, declaring: ‘let us start by going through the perplexities (diaporêsantes) concerning these matters’. 40 Some of the perplexities that he goes on to raise, especially those concerning the saltiness of the sea and the characteristics of winds, resemble questions posed in Books XXIII and XXVI of Problemata. 41
As we have seen above, Aristotle's resolution of a general question often prepares the way for his tackling of more specific problems. Particularly striking in this respect are the consequences of his settling in Physics I.1 of a basic methodological issue. Where the inquiries into nature by famed predecessors had set out from first principles, his own inquiries will, he declares, be based on ‘what is more immediately cognizable and clear to us’, that is phenomena evident to the senses, proceeding towards ‘what is clearer and more intimately cognizable in its own nature’, that is causes and principles. 42 He critically contrasts his own physical agenda, based on this method of inquiry, with that of those predecessors. And as becomes evident in the work as a whole, his agenda involves a host of perplexities. 43
Even from this brief survey it is evident that perplexities launch and guide Aristotle's inquiries into nature in many different ways: in preparing the ground for presentation of his own views; in refuting and/or modifying opinions of predecessors that he presents as worth taking seriously; in resolving arguments that threaten his own opinions; in establishing definitions; in inferring explanations; and in posing questions for further investigation and debate.
The status of Aristotle's aporetics
Aristotle's accounts of his aporetic inquiries are often taken more or less at face value. 44 Some, however, have raised questions about their authenticity. Paul Moraux (1980: 173), for example, contrasts what he declares to be present-day scientists’ meticulous accounts of their routes to discovery with those of Aristotle, in which it seems that ‘neither the method of the account nor the evidence presented reproduce precisely the intellectual steps which directed the discovery’. 45 And Pierre Aubenque (1980: 7) remarks that ‘in reading Aristotle, one often has the impression of a professor who feigns perplexity and pretends to seek with the student a solution that he has already discovered long ago, or else, for conscience sake, lingers to refute prejudicial objections raised by confusedly speaking adversaries’. 46
In response to Moraux's judgement it should be noted that Aristotle does not explicitly present temporal stages of his inquiries: ‘I then observed’; ‘next, I enquired’; ‘finally, I concluded’; etc. As seen in the previous section, his ordering of questions and answers takes a variety of forms, variously preparing the ground for, presenting and defending his own opinions. The general purpose of these orderings is surely not to convey the actual steps of his inquiries, but rather to provide lines of argument that will convince his audiences of his conclusions.
Turning to Aubenque's shrewd observation, we find support in Topics I.2, where Aristotle declares the dialectical methods there presented to be useful for three purposes: ‘mental training (gumnasia); conversations (enteuxeis); and the philosophical sciences (kata philosophian epistêmeis)’. 47 Rather than anachronistically imposing on Aristotle a strict division between rigorous presentation of scientific arguments, on the one hand, and teaching and popularization, on the other, it seems plausible to suppose that his aporetic accounts of his inquiries into nature serve all three of the functions listed in Topics. For as well as providing ‘philosophical’ justification of his opinions, they surely reflect both his teaching at the Lyceum and the disputations held there. 48 To this it may be added that in presenting questions as aporiai Aristotle's main aim is surely to arouse curiosity in his audience rather than to express his own feelings of perplexity. 49
Aporetics today
A major issue concerning Aristotelian aporetic inquiry is that of its cultural specificity. To what extent does such posing and debating of questions relating to nature reflect, or even perhaps derive from, debate in the political and legal institutions of ancient Greek civic democracy? How far can parallels be found in certain other cultures; or are aporetic approaches to nature a general feature of literate, or even all human cultures? 50 Further substantial questions concern the reception, appropriations and transformations of Aristotelian aporetics. 51 Now, however, setting aside such large cultural and historical issues, I shall simply touch on aspects of aporetics that thrive today.
To start with, systematic posing and answering of questions lies at the heart of the entire discipline of informatics, that is, automated information storage and retrieval. Alongside the development of these technologies, philosophers have analysed the relations between questions and answers (erotetic logic), of Q and A dialectical resolution of conflict, and of systematic quests for explanations. 52 Such analyses have been recognised as belonging to a tradition of ‘aporetics’ going back to Plato and Aristotle. 53
Similarly, in the natural sciences there are obvious continuations of Aristotelian techniques: in setting the stage through preliminary posing of questions; and in the focusing on contrastive questions in preparation for inference to the best explanation. 54 As for Aristotelian genres of communication, we still find ‘problem texts’ posing unsolved scientific questions and suggesting possible resolutions and lines of inquiry. 55 And even the genre of disputation survives in ceremonial and ritual form in the oral examination of doctoral dissertations at some European universities. 56
Paradoxes too continue to engage scientists and their publics. Thus, much publicity has greeted a recent resolution of the Hawking paradox. This set general relativity and quantum mechanics at odds over black holes, with the former committed to disappearance of matter that obliterated information, thus contradicting the insistence of the latter on the mathematical reversibility of all physical processes. The recent resolution challenges the view that the matter vanishes without trace, maintaining that the requisite information is preserved by ‘quantum hair’, an imprint left by the vanishing matter in the gravitational field outside the black hole. 57
Aristotelian concern to refute or come to terms with rival opinions continues through the ages in scientific controversies, and there is a substantial recent literature on the roles of conflict and uncertainty in major transformations in the sciences. 58 Some, indeed, have placed the tackling of problems through dialectical engagement, both with ourselves and with others, at the very heart of scientific rationality. 59 And a strong case has been made for the importance in scientific inquiry and communication of ‘polylogue’, discussion involving, as often in Aristotle, many points of view rather than a simple one-to-one confrontation. 60
This workshop on ‘Well-being in the Forest, Well-being in the Past’ has raised a most profitable general perplexity, namely the question of how we are to give an account of well-being that satisfies the full range of disciplines devoted to it. For we have seen how well-being is understood in very different ways by philosophers, evolutionary biologists, neurophysiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and anthropologists. However, we have also experienced how a polylogue devoted to these perplexing differences can lead towards their resolution. For example, we have glimpsed ways in which well-being may be at once personal and communal, and how it may combine acquiescence towards death with affirmation of life.
Use of earlier opinions to set the stage for the author's own agenda and opinions has persisted from Aristotle to the present day. 61 It is evident that Aristotle's accounts of endoxa have little in common with present-day prefatory accounts of progress culminating in the scientific views to be presented and defended. However, Aristotle's attempts to find at least partial truth in certain of the endoxa of predecessors are echoed in scientists’ concern to appropriate evidence from displaced theories by reducing them to their own under limiting conditions, a notable case being the progressive approximation of Newtonian mechanics to special relativity as maximum velocity is reduced. 62 And current respect for displaced theories is further prompted by the cases in which key aspects of theories long deemed fallacious – for example, Werner's theory of continental drift and Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics – have subsequently been partially revived. 63
As noted earlier, the endoxa with which Aristotle launches so many of his inquiries into nature variously emanate from ‘all’, or ‘the majority’ or ‘the wise – that is, to all of the wise or to the majority or to the most famous and distinguished of them’. The question arises, then as now, of who precisely is or should be involved in the formation and pursuit of agendas for the study of nature. This is currently a pressing issue, given the ever-increasing pressure from policy makers and funding bodies for professional scientists to adopt interdisciplinary approaches and to be involved with amateurs, or so-called ‘citizen scientists’. The authority of citizen scientists is of particular concern in the environmental and field sciences (ecology, geology, botany, zoology, etc.) in which they have long been extensively involved. 64 Yet another controversial issue here is the role of marginal and maverick scientists. 65 On this my own view is that one may often rightly regard the theories that they advance as bordering on the absurd, whilst respecting the questions they raise. Rupert Sheldrake, for example, in advancing his strange theory of universal ‘morphic resonance’ singles out phenomena that pose effective challenges to current scientific orthodoxy. 66
Earlier we touched on the issue of the reliability of Aristotle's aporetic accounts of his inquiries into nature, noting Paul Moraux's view that, unlike present scientists’ narrations of their routes to discovery, Aristotle's are not faithful to his actual ‘intellectual steps’. But it is arguable that, while Moraux raises an important aporia, the contrast he draws is back-to-front. For, as argued above, Aristotle's accounts make no pretence at conveying temporal sequences of steps in his inquiries. Accounts published by present-day scientists, however, frequently do so, and there are on occasion grounds for questioning their strict veracity. It has, for example, long been acknowledged that these narratives are often aimed primarily at justification of conclusions rather than precise re-enactment of the routes to them. More worryingly, it is now also widely recognised that in the interests of publication and impact positive outcomes may be hyped and negative ones played down or even omitted. 67 Moreover, even when the focus is clearly on the steps of inquiry, the rhetoric-free ‘writing degree zero’ of journal articles often simplifies the complex processes involved, passing over setbacks, confusions and controversies, and rendering ‘invisible’ many of the instruments and persons involved. 68 Details of routes from field, laboratory and observatory activities to published products deserve much further investigation, perhaps through revival of ethnomethodological ‘participant observer’ methods. 69
On the issue of feelings in the sciences, we find an extensive historical and philosophical literature on the roles of wonder and love of beauty in scientific pursuits. 70 But, moving from positive to negative feelings, what about perplexity, frustration and confusion? Why, given the obviosity of their roles in inquiries into nature, have they received so very little attention? Such concentration on wonder and magnificent order, as opposed to perplexity and complexity, is surely in large measure a legacy of creationist and romantic visions of nature. Be that as it may, the perplexing issue of roles of perplexity in the sciences deserves much more attention. To start with, exploration is needed of the diverse sources of perplexity: paradoxes; baffling entities and states postulated in high theory; counterexamples to cherished theories; puzzling observations; difficulties in providing proofs; doubts about others’ reports; failures of instruments; conflicts of values (e.g., of risk with benefit); etc. 71 Building on this, there should be detailed studies of the communication of perplexities and of the diverse ways in which they prompt and sustain scientific inquiries.
Perplexity and well-being, then and now
Aristotle famously opens Metaphysics by declaring that all of us ‘naturally desire knowledge’. 72 Later, after observing how the quest for knowledge starts with wonder and perplexity, he insists that this is a quest for knowledge as an end in itself, such being the knowledge that yields euporia, and not ‘for any practical utility’. 73 And given that ‘euporia’, ‘resolution of perplexity’, can also be rendered as ‘plenty’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘fulfilment’, ‘abundance’, we cannot doubt that it is a pleasant state. Just how satisfying is revealed in Nicomachean Ethics, where the exercise of reason, the faculty that makes us human, through pursuit and attainment of contemplative knowledge, theoria, sharply distinct from productive knowledge, technê, figures as the highest form of eudaimonia, that is, well-being and self-fulfilment. 74
Aristotle's vaunting of eudaimonic exercise of reason is, however, deeply problematic. In the final book of Nicomachean Ethics he insists that compared with ‘practical pursuits displaying the virtues’ the ‘the activity of the intellect is felt to excel in serious worth’ and that the ‘life of moral virtue’ can yield eudaimonia ‘only in a secondary degree’. 75 This seems at odds with his enthusiastic accounts elsewhere in the work of eudaimonia achieved through virtuous action, friendship and political engagement. 76 In part the apparent conflict is resolved by noting that the different types of eudaimonia, whilst variously requiring education and virtuous character-formation, are tied to different ways of life: everyday life with friends and family; nobler than this, political life; and noblest of all, the contemplative life of philosophy. 77 But this still leaves it unclear how far everyday and civic obligations may be set aside in pursuit of knowledge and its eudaimonic contemplation. On this widely debated issue my own inclination is to endorse the view of the translator in the Loeb edition of Nicomachean Ethics: ‘[t]here is here an ambiguity in Aristotle's ethical doctrine which is nowhere cleared up’. 78
Following the nineteenth-century consolidation of natural science as an alliance of disciplines, ideals of pure and disinterested knowledge have been widely adopted, with a sharp distinction being widely drawn between pure and applied sciences. 79 This distinction is open to the charge of ideological false consciousness; for it obscures the dependence of the sciences on social interests and prosperity as well as the vast impacts of science-based technologies, both positive and negative, on humanity and life on earth. Moreover, as ‘ivory tower’ academics we face the very perplexity that runs through Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: How far does our self-fulfilment through acquisition of pure knowledge license our setting aside or downplaying of personal, civil and educational responsibilities? 80
By way of conclusion, let me mention a couple of important issues suggested by Aristotelian aporetics and by this workshop.
Present-day scientific communication is dominated by positive findings. Few publications offer open-ended discussion of problems and conferences rarely allocate time for extended debate on presentations. Yet it can hardly be denied that the advancement of knowledge requires not only resolution of established questions but also, crucially, the formation of promising new agendas. How such agendas are established is a large, and problematic issue. 81 It is, however, evident both from Aristotle's dialectical diaporiai and from the extended, open-ended discussions at this workshop that dialectical exchange, both virtual and real, can play a significant role not only in the resolution of perplexities but also in their profitable generation.
As noted above, the workshop revealed divergent views of well-being from practitioners of a wide range of disciplines. Further, it is unclear how we can do justice to the very different forms well-being takes for each of us in such different settings as library, laboratory, pub, concert hall, and dinner table; and equally unclear how far we can match our own forms of well-being with those in other cultures. So here we face that very perplexity with which Aristotle wrestles in Nicomachean Ethics. How, in attempting to clarify well-being, can we steer a temperate course between uncritical pluralism and dogmatic monism?
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Geoffrey Lloyd and Marina Frasca-Spada for useful comments. Thanks also to Sophia Connell, who along with helpful suggestions also kindly rescued him from some misreadings of Aristotle.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.