Finally...

Finally, I should like to be permitted to point out that Aristotle himself was able to glimpse the possibility of applying the notion of practical truth to science, to wisdom and to technology. There is a text by Aristotle which seems to me to be extremely valuable in this regard, contained in Metaphysics M 10.

Naturally, if we seek to make use of the Greek’s ideas in today’s debates, we should not lose sight of this passage, perhaps one with the most bearing on the present of all Aristotle’s works. In it he distinguishes two kinds of ‘science and knowledge’: potential and actual. He basically says that the idea that science concerns the universal is true only to a certain extent, because it is also possible to speak of a science of the particular, ‘[that] deals with a this ’.

Potential science and knowledge will indeed concern the universal, but science and knowledge in act will concern what is in act, that is, ‘ a this ’. Whenever we get to know something or to recognize it in the present, what we get to know is not a universal, but a this . We do of course know what we know through the universal, ‘by means of the kind’, but in act we know what is in act. We must also bear in mind, that an act is not something that finishes in an instant.

The Aristotelian notion of act - as is made clear in Metaphysics Q 6 - is not linked to instantaneousness but with full presence, which can be prolonged through time, for we can in one act see and go on seeing, live and go on living, think and go on thinking, be happy and go on being happy.

I cannot here develop all the implications of these passages[^39] , which are many and profound and require a complete re-reading of Aristotle, but I would at least like to suggest that practical truth could be understood asthe truth of science in act . Previous…