Thus: let A be animal, B respiration, C wall. Then A is predicable
of all B (for all that breathes is animal), but of no C; and
consequently B is predicable of no C; that is, the wall does not
breathe. Such causes are like far-fetched explanations, which
precisely consist in making the cause too remote, as in Anacharsis'
account of why the Scythians have no flute-players; namely because
they have no vines.
Thus, then, do the syllogism of the fact and the syllogism of the
reasoned fact differ within one science and according to the
position of the middle terms. But there is another way too in which
the fact and the reasoned fact differ, and that is when they are
investigated respectively by different sciences. This occurs in the
case of problems related to one another as subordinate and superior,
as when optical problems are subordinated to geometry, mechanical
problems to stereometry, harmonic problems to arithmetic, the data
of observation to astronomy. (Some of these sciences bear almost the
same name; e.g. mathematical and nautical astronomy, mathematical
and acoustical harmonics.) Here it is the business of the empirical
observers to know the fact, of the mathematicians to know the reasoned
fact; for the latter are in possession of the demonstrations giving
the causes, and are often ignorant of the fact: just as we have
often a clear insight into a universal, but through lack of
observation are ignorant of some of its particular instances.
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