Organon

What it is

The Organon is the standard collection of six logical works by Aristotle, later arranged by the ancient editor Andronicus of Rhodes. The works include the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations.

Why it matters

These texts founded formal logic and the syllogism, dominating Western reasoning for roughly two thousand years. They were studied by medieval scholars such as Thomas Aquinas, and by Islamic and Jewish philosophers including Averroes and Maimonides, showing how Aristotle's ideas spread across cultures and centuries. The Organon's influence was so great that later thinkers like Francis Bacon wrote direct responses to it.

Look closer

• Why do you think these logical works were studied by scholars across so many different religions and cultures?
• What does the survival and translation of these texts across Greek, Arabic, and Latin tell us about how knowledge traveled in the ancient and medieval world?
• How might a lecture-based origin have shaped the way these ideas are presented?