ARISTOTLE TO AUGUSTINE There are three kinds of sciences, Aristotle tells us in the Metaphysics (E 1025b25): productive, practical, and theoretical sciences Productive sciences are, naturally enough, sciences that have a product They include engineering and architecture, with products like bridges and houses, but also disciplines such as strategy and rhetoric, where the product is something less concrete, such as victory on the battleWeld or in the courts Practical sciences are ones that guide behaviour, most notably ethics and politics Theoretical sciences are those that have no product and no practical goal, but in which information and understanding is sought for its own sake There are three theoretical sciences: physics, mathematics, and theology (Metaph E 1026a19) In this trilogy only mathematics is what it seems to be ‘Physics’ means natural philosophy or the study of nature (physis) It is a much broader study than physics as understood nowadays, including chemistry and meteorology and even biology and psychology ‘Theology’ is, for Aristotle, the study of entities above and superior to human beings, that is to say, the heavenly bodies as well as whatever divinities may inhabit the starry skies His writings on this topic resemble a textbook of astronomy more than they resemble any discourse on natural religion It may seem surprising that metaphysics, a discipline theoretical par excellence, does not Wgure in Aristotle’s list of theoretical sciences, since so much of his writing is concerned with it, and since one of his longest treatises bears the title Metaphysics The word, in fact, does not occur in Aristotle’s own writings and Wrst appears in the posthumous catalogue of his works It simply means ‘after physics’ and refers to the works that were listed after his Physics But he did in fact come to recognize the branch of philosophy we now call ‘metaphysics’: he called it ‘First Philosophy’ and he deWned it as the discipline that studies Being as Being.3 Aristotle on Rhetoric and Poetry In the realm of productive sciences Aristotle wrote two works, the Rhetoric and the Poetics, designed to assist barristers and playwrights in their respective tasks Rhetoric, Aristotle says, is the discipline that indicates in any given case the possible means of persuasion: it is not restricted to a See Ch below 75