亞里士多德創(chuàng)立的新學(xué)科——邏輯學(xué)，使淹沒在神話和寓言迷霧當(dāng)中的古希臘思維慢慢清晰化。

Aristotle and Greek Science

II. The Work of Aristotle

It does not appear that Aristotle published in his life-time any technical writings except those on logic and rhetoric; and the present form of the logical treatises is due to later editing. In the case of the Metaphysics and the Politics the notes left by Aristotle seem to have been put together by his executors without revision or alteration. Even the unity of style which marks Aristotle's writings, and offers an argument to those who defend his direct authorship, may be, after all, merely a unity given them through common editing by the Peripatetic School. About this matter there rages a sort of Homeric question, of almost epic scope, into which the busy reader will not care to go, and on which a modest student will not undertake to judge. We may at all events be sure that Aristotle is the spiritual author of all these books that bear his name: that the hand may be in some cases another's hand, but that the head and the heart are his.

III. The Foundation of Logic

The first great distinction of Aristotle is that almost without predecessors, almost entirely by his own hard thinking, he created a new science—Logic. Renan speaks of "the ill training of every mind that has not, directly or indirectly, come under Greek discipline"; but in truth the Greek intellect itself was undisciplined and chaotic till the ruthless formulas of Aristotle provided a ready method for the test and correction of thought. Even Plato (if a lover may so far presume) was an unruly and irregular soul, caught up too frequently in a cloud of myth, and letting beauty too richly veil the face of truth. Aristotle himself, as we shall see, violated his own canons plentifully; but then he was the product of his past, and not of that future which his thought would build. The political and economic decay of Greece brought a weakening of the Hellenic mind and character after Aristotle; but when a new race, after a millennium of barbaric darkness, found again the leisure and ability for speculation, it was Aristotle's "Organon" of logic, translated by Boethius (470–525 A.D.), that became the very mould of medieval thought, the strict mother of that scholastic philosophy which, though rendered sterile by encircling dogmas, nevertheless trained the intellect of adolescent Europe to reasoning and subtlety, constructed the terminology of modern science, and laid the bases of that same maturity of mind which was to outgrow and overthrow the very system and methods which had given it birth and sustenance.

▍語言點(diǎn)

rage wars: 打仗

rage questions: 提問

at all events: 在任何情況下

great distinction: 優(yōu)秀之處

undisciplined and chaotic: 混亂的

a cloud of myth: 神秘之云；迷糊

cloud storage: 云儲備

canon: n. 經(jīng)典

subtlety: n. 微妙；敏銳；精明

outgrow: vt. 生長；長大

邏輯是一門科學(xué)，正確思維的程序可以像物理學(xué)和幾何學(xué)一樣簡化成定律；邏輯也是一門藝術(shù)，鋼琴家的手指在琴鍵上輕松自如地彈出優(yōu)美的樂曲同樣也需要邏輯的支持。

Aristotle and Greek Science

III. The Foundation of Logic

Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct thinking. It is the logy or method of every science, of every discipline and every art; and even music harbors it. It is a science because to a considerable extent the processes of correct thinking can be reduced to rules like physics and geometry, and taught to any normal mind; it is an art because by practice it gives to thought, at last, that unconscious and immediate accuracy which guides the fingers of the pianist over his instrument to effortless harmonies.?

There was a hint of this new science in Socrates' maddening insistence on definitions, and in Plato's constant refining of every concept. Aristotle's little treatise on Definitions shows how his logic found nourishment at this source.

▍語言點(diǎn)

harbor: vt. 包容

We must spend a few hours of our day to harbor our knowledge and wisdom.

to a considerable extent: 在很大程度上

reduce: vt. 簡化；提煉

instrument: n. 樂器；工具

effortless: adj. 不做作的

maddening: adj. 瘋狗一般的

treatise: n. 論文

nourishment: n. 養(yǎng)分