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[995a]
[1]
and anything beyond this seems not to
be on the same level, but somewhat strange and unintelligible on
account of its unfamiliarity; for it is the familiar that is
intelligible. The powerful effect of familiarity is clearly shown by
the laws, in which the fanciful and puerile survivals prevail, through
force of habit, against our recognition of them.Thus some people will not accept the
statements of a speaker unless he gives a mathematical proof; others
will not unless he makes use of illustrations; others expect to have a
poet adduced as witness. Again, some require exactness in everything,
while others are annoyed by it, either because they cannot follow the
reasoning or because of its pettiness; for there is something about
exactness which seems to some people to be mean, no less in an
argument than in a business transaction.Hence one must
have been already trained how to take each kind of argument, because
it is absurd to seek simultaneously for knowledge and for the method
of obtaining it; and neither is easy to acquire. Mathematical accuracy
is not to be demanded in everything, but only in things which do not
contain matter.Hence this
method is not that of natural science, because presumably all nature
is concerned with matter. Hence we should first inquire what nature
is; for in this way it will become clear what the objects of natural
science are [and whether it belongs to one science or more than one to
study the causes
[20]
and
principles of things].1
1 These words have evidently been inserted to form a kind of link with the subject matter of the Metaphysics. The book is almost certainly part of a quite independent treatise; see Introduction.
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