Concepts in Classical Greece

The concept of concept emerged in classical Greece once philosophers began to reflect on their disagreements about the nature of things. Plato made a critical advance by distinguishing the content and object of thought. It is only with Aristotle, who has more to say about content, that we find the beginnings of a theory of concepts. On his view perception enables animals to distinguish between different types of particular, but cannot consider these types on their own abstractly, as we do in thought. This latter ability, together with the operations of combination and division, allows us to consider a much wider range of types than we encounter directly in perception. Abstraction is the ability to focus on certain features rather than attending to all. But the ability to create new concepts, by adding positive and negative qualifications, underwrites the productivity of language and the possibility of scientific investigation.