Since in each genus it is the attributes that belong essentially to that particular genus that belong to it of necessity, it is evident that scientific demonstrations are concerned with essential attributes and proceed from them. For accidental attributes are not necessary, and therefore we do not necessarily know why the conclusion is true; not even if the attributes belong always but not per se, as in syllogisms through signs. For we shall not have knowledge of the essential fact as essential, nor shall we know its reason. To know the reason of a thing is to know it through its cause.
- Aristotle Posterior Analytics Book 1 VI
While we ponder the pagan gods, our relationship with them, and the current morality of our neo-pagan world today, I’m aware that some readers will doubt.
That some, more inclined towards materialism, will think that I’m out there,
Naked in the forest,
Yelling at trees in conversation.
To you materialists, I would posit the reasoning Aristotle articulated above.
Pagans, of all societies, saw essential aspects and characteristics to immaterial beings.
They made sacrifices to those beings.
And saw specific outcomes.
We, in our day….
See can see essential aspects and characteristics within the world around us, patterns.
We recognize that if we make sacrifices, those same in kind and essential nature to those the pagans did….
We get the same outcomes the pagans did…
I would call that essentially the same.
As in, the same in its very essence of being.
Beyond that, I really don’t care what the stated goals are, the original reasons institutions came to being, the reasons people say they join or do what they do.
Those, dear readers, are what Aristotle calls accidents.
As in, something that doesn’t matter, foundationally, to what the thing is or why it exists.
So, they are the same for everything that matters.
And different in everything that doesn’t.
Thus, they are the same in kind - in genus.
Aristotle, for his part, would consider that a scientific demonstration when shown with reason and often enough to be taken as fact.
So, what kind of materialist mad house are we living in?
Who runs it?
And…
How materialist is it, really?
Escape to the woods,
Leave your materialism behind,
And breath the free air.
Scientific knowledge cannot be acquired by sense-perception. Even granting that perception is of the object as qualified, and not of a mere particular, still what we perceive must be a particular thing at a particular place and time. On the other hand a universal term of general application cannot be perceived by the sense, because it is not a particular thing or at a given time; if it were, it would not be universal; for we describe as universal only that which obtains always and everywhere.
- Aristotle Posterior Analytics Book 1, XXXI