Ian Bell Knihy

Against his better judgement, private sleuth Simon Barrett accepts a job in Britain.Quite apart from having to leave his handgun in America, local knowledge can make all the difference in detective work. Yet the daughter of multimillion-dollar tycoon, Randolph G. Sheridan, studying religion at the University of London, has been kidnapped in Soho and her father can afford the best.Yet why should anyone suspect how deeply the forces of darkness have worked their way into the British establishment? Or how little use any gun will be to Simon anyway, unless he has silver bullets to load it with?How could Simon suspect that the Vatican has recruited an angel from Hell to help him find Tamara Sheridan, if only they can find their way through a gloomy German forest and into the labyrinthine confines of an ancient castle that the remaining locals both fear and wish to forget.

This is a study of the influence of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics on the structure and methodology of the science of being qua being undertaken in his Metaphysics. Bell argues that Aristotle's account of the science of being developed in the methodological chapters of the Metaphysics is significantly influenced by his conception of scientific knowledge in the Posterior Analytics, in particular that Aristotelian metaphysics is a discipline unified and distinguished from the other sciences by the 'qua itself' relation of its objects to being and substantiality. This discipline undertakes three different tasks: inquiries into the essential attributes of being, the principles and causes of being, and the common axioms. These tasks employ different methodologies, which are all influenced by methodologies developed in the Posterior Analytics. In the latter two cases, however, these methodologies are significantly adapted for new tasks and circumstances. Bell offers an interpretation of the Metaphysics' central books according to which they constitute a contribution to the inquiry into the principles and causes of being, and argues that the problem of the relationship between the science of being and first philosophy or theology is also most usefully addressed within this framework. This book will be interest to scholars and students of Aristotle's metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of science.