On Aristotle's "Topics 1"

"Aristotle's Topics is about dialectic, which can be understood as a debate between two people or as an individual's internal debate. Its purposes range from philosophical training to discovering the first principles of thought. Its arguments concern the four predicables: definition, property, genus, and accident. Aristotle explains how these four fit into his ten categories and in Book 1 begins to outline strategies for debate, such as the definition of ambiguity.". "Alexander's commentary on Book 1 concerns the definition of Aristotelian syllogistic argument; its resistance to the rival Stoic theory of inference; and the character of inductive inference and of rhetorical argument. Alexander distinguishes inseparable accidents, such as the whiteness of snow, from defining differentiae, such as its being frozen, and considers how these differences fit into the schemes of categories. He speaks of dialectic as a stochastic discipline in which success is to be judged not by victory but by skill in argument. Alexander also investigates the subject of ambiguity, which had been richly developed since Aristotle by the rival Stoic school."--BOOK JACKET.