Aristotle on Biology

Aristotle was able to accomplish what he did in biology because he had given a great deal of thought to the nature of scientific inquiry. How does one progress from the superficial and unorganized state of everyday experience toward organized scientific understanding? To answer this question, you need a concept of the goal to be achieved, and Aristotle developed such a concept in his Prior and Posterior Analytics (henceforth abbreviated as APr. and APo., respectively). The goal of inquiry, he argued, was a system of concepts and propositions organized hierarchically, ultimately resting on knowledge of the essential natures of the objects of study and certain other necessary first principles.