Scientific Procedure in Aristotle's ‘de Caelo’

It is difficult to deduce the Aristotelian scientific procedure — to take his abstract statement of the nature of science and to show that his actual method in a particular work is adequately explained by the initial definition. Yet Aristotle's actual method is worth getting at. It provides insight into Aristotle and into Greek thought, and it sheds light on the course of ideas during the centuries which have been scientifically Aristotelian. In the following pages, I have tried to discover and to describe the method at work in a particular scientific treatise. The unit chosen for study is the first book and a half of the De caelo. Here it is that Aristotle develops his highly influential science of the celestial bodies.