Chapter I: On the number and arrangements of Questions edit
- The objects of knowledge are four in number:—a thing’s existence, its cause, the question whether it is, and its nature.
The subjects of enquiry are equal in number to the objects of scientific knowledge. We enquire about four things, the fact of the phenomenon, its cause, whether it exists and what its nature is. Now when we ask whether a thing is this or that, taking two alternatives, e.g. asking whether the sun is eclipsed or not, we ask about the fact. A proof of this is that when we find that it is eclipsed we abandon this line of enquiry. Also if we know from the first that it is eclipsed we do not ask whether it is eclipsed or not. Next, after learning the fact of the phenomenon we seek for the cause of it. For example, when we know that the sun is eclipsed or that the earth does move, we go on to seek for the cause of the eclipse or of the movement.
These questions concerning the fact and cause stand towards each other in the relation here stated, but in some questions the enquiry proceeds differently: namely whether a thing exists at all or not; e.g. as to whether or not a centaur or a god is. By ‘whether it is or not’ I mean is absolutely, not whether a thing is, e.g., white or not white. When we know that the thing does exist we enquire about its nature, asking, for instance, ‘What then is a god, or what is a man?’