350 BC
TOPICS
by Aristotle
translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge
Book I
1
OUR treatise proposes to find a line of inquiry whereby we shall
be able to reason from opinions that are generally accepted about
every problem propounded to us, and also shall ourselves, when
standing up to an argument, avoid saying anything that will obstruct
us. First, then, we must say what reasoning is, and what its varieties
are, in order to grasp dialectical reasoning: for this is the object
of our search in the treatise before us.
Now reasoning is an argument in which, certain things being laid
down, something other than these necessarily comes about through them.
(a) It is a 'demonstration', when the premisses from which the
reasoning starts are true and primary, or are such that our
knowledge of them has originally come through premisses which are
primary and true: (b) reasoning, on the other hand, is
'dialectical', if it reasons from opinions that are generally
accepted.
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