Species

The Classical Era: Science by Division 15

Of things said without any combination, each signies either substance or quantity or

qualication or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing

or being affected.^60

The topics, or as they are called in the later logics, heads of predicables, are

important in the later history of the logical notion of species and genus, particu-

larly in the Middle Ages. For Aristotle, they are (as the Middle Ages philosophers

called them in Latin) praedicamenta (those which are said). In short, the topics are

the things that can be said of some thing or things. When speaking of a thing, the

topics are:

1. Substance (οὐσία, ousia, sometimes mistranslated as essence)—that which
   makes something a particular, and not general, thing.


2. Quantity (ποσόν, poson)—how much of the thing, in space or measure.


3. Quality (ποιόν, poion)—of what kind or quality the thing is.


4. Relation (πρός τι, pros ti, toward something)—the relation in which the
   thing stands to something else.


5. Place (ποῦ, pou, where)—the thing’s position in its environment.


6. Time (πότε, pote, when)—the time of the thing.


7. Being-in-a-position (κεῖσθαι, keisthai, to lie)—the orientation of the thing.


8. Having or state (ἔχειν, echein, to have or be)—the properties of the thing.


9. Action (ποιεῖν, poiein, to make or do)—the changes the thing causes.


10. Being affected (πάσχειν, paschein, to suffer or undergo)—the changes
    made to the thing.

Aristotle ties the topics into the logic of classication. He says:

Whenever one thing is predicated of another as of a subject, all things said of what

is predicated will be said of the subject also. For example, man is predicated of the

individual man, and animal of man; so animal will be predicated of the individual

man also—for the individual man is both a man and an animal. The differentiae of

genera which are different and not subordinate one to the other are themselves differ-

ent in kind. For example, animal and knowledge: footed, winged, aquatic, two-footed,

are differentiae of animal, but none of these is a differentia of knowledge; one sort of

knowledge does not differ from another by being two-footed. However, there is noth-

ing to prevent genera subordinate one to the other from having the same differentiae.

For the higher are predicated of the genera below them, so that all differentiae of the

predicated genus will be differentiae of the subject also.^61

Aristotle denes four “predicables” (that which is predicated of things): denition

(horos), property (idion), genus, and accident (symbebekos).^62 Species (eidos) is not,

in Aristotle’s list, a predicable, because it is only true of individuals although it was

added to the “heads of predicables” in the fourteenth-century debates on logic.

(^60) Ackrill translation [Aristotle 1995].
(^61) 1b10–1b24.
(^62) 101b16–25.