On how we acquire knowledge of first principles (archai) in Aristotle : A defense of intuition (nous) understood as integral to induction (epagoge)

In this essay I consider from various perspectives the question of whether, for Aristotle, intuition (nous) is part of the process of induction (epagoge) helping to reach the first principles (archai) or whether nous is rather a state of knowing first brought about through a successful induction alone. I have argued we should be careful of drawing conclusions about the nature of the involvement of nous in the grasping of first principles on the basis of APo alone. The main reasons I give for this are to be found in the connections that can be drawn between Aristotle’s account of the grasping of the first principles from Met. I.1, the account of the intellectual grasp of the forms in DA II & III and the process of induction described in APo II.19. These texts, I argue, should all be understood as parallel accounts, describing from different points of view, one and the same intuitive process of knowledge acquisition. The unified picture emerging from this reading provides the basis for a view that nous should be understood as an integral part of the process of induction and not, as some scholars have argued, only as a result of it. Aristotle’s version of induction, unlike a common contemporaneous conception of it, is not a matter of generalization about a sample of a given population, the conclusion of which is then extrapolated to all or part of the total population, but rather relies on a form of mental insight or intuition which is to be understood as an ability to grasp a certain sort of universal features of things called, 'the why' or first principles, which, as well as epistemic concepts, constitute the principles which organize the natural world. It is precisely this correspondence between the first principles of reason and those of the natural world that for Aristotle explains the type of intuitive induction herein attributed to him