organon (organon)

[ Employing all his wits in vain expense, Abusing all his organons of sense. Marston , Scourge of Villanie, viii. 210. O thou great God, ravish my earthly sprite! That for the time a more than human skill May feed the organons of all my sense. Peele, David and Beths a be, st. 15. 2. An instrument of thought. Originally applied to the logical theory of demonstration, and then by the Peripatetics to the whole of logic, especially to the topics of Aristotle or the rules for probable reasoning, as being only an instrument or aid to philosophy, and not meriting the higher place of a part of philosophy claimed for it by the Stoics and most of the Academics; thence given as a title to the logical treatises of Aristotle. The organon of Des cartes is doubt. Veitch, Introd. to Des cartes's Method, p. xxi. Hence-3. A code of rules or principles for scientific investigation. Bacon's work on this subject was called by him the "Novum Organum." Kant uses the term to denote the particular rules for acquiring the knowledge of a given cla of objects. ... I never could detect that he did not just as rigorously observe the peculiar logic of the law as if he had never investigated any other than legal truth by any other organon than legal logic in his life. R. Choate , Addre es, p. 259. The theory of judicial evidence is constantly mi tated or misconceived even in this country [England), and the that is, English law on the subject is too often described as being which it is its chief distinction not to be as an Organon, as a sort of contrivance for the discovery Maine, Village Communities, p. 302. of truth which English lawyers have patented. Also organum .