What is Aristotle's Organon?

The Organon is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works dedicated to logical analysis and dialectic. The word itself translates from Ancient Greek as an instrument or tool. These writings formed the foundation of Aristotelian logic, which found wide application across Western science and philosophy for millennia.

What we know

• The Organon is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. [1, 2]
• The Ancient Greek word organon means instrument, tool, or organ. [2]
• The Topics is the name given to one of Aristotle's six works on logic collectively known as the Organon. [4]
• Aristotelian logic from the Organon found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia. [5]

Where to go next

• a case in pointWhat topics are covered in Aristotle's Topics?
• what followedHow did medieval philosophers develop Aristotle's logic?
• the bigger pictureWhat is the Corpus Aristotelicum?
• compared withHow does Francis Bacon's Novum Organon relate to Aristotle?
• whoWho arranged the works of Aristotle?
• an unexpected connectionHow did an ancient Greek logic collection inspire a 17th-century scientific revolution text?Francis Bacon explicitly titled his 1620 work Novum Organon as a direct response to and replacement for Aristotle's traditional logical framework.

Sources

• [1]Organon (Wikidata Q500930) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Organon · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Works of Aristotle · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Topics (Aristotle) · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]History of logic · CC BY-SA 4.0