SOURCE: "Aristotle on the Science of the Soul," in Mind and Imagination in Aristotle, Yale University press, 1988, pp. 1-22.

In the following essay, Wedin maintains that in De Anima, Aristotle provides a general theory of the soul which he extends and develops in other works. Wedin goes on to explore the relationship between psychology and physics, and analyzes the 'form and function" of the soul according to Aristotle, arguing that Aristotle's conception of the soul is as a functional, cognitive system.

It is a commonplace that Aristotle invented logic—not that he invented logical inference, nor even that he was the first to treat inferences in explicitly logical terms, but rather that he gave us the first virtually complete system of certain kinds of logical inference. It is for this reason that we rank him as the inventor of the science of logic. As with logic, so with...