Aristotle believed that a person could come to know universal truths through the process of induction. This is when a person looks at many specific examples and then draws a conclusion about a general principle.
His view was that we can know things because they are true, not just because we have been told them or seen them happen. For example, if you see a bird sitting on top of a tree every time you look out of your window, you will probably come to believe that birds always sit on top of trees. You have observed this for so long that it seems natural to believe it is always true.
However, sometimes we can be wrong about things we believe are true. For example, if you see 1000 birds sitting on top of trees, there may be one day when all the birds fly off without sitting down first! In this case your belief would be wrong even though you had observed many examples in which birds sat down first before flying off again.
In addition, Aristotle believed that the key to scientific knowledge was observation, which he called the “sense perception” of things in the world around us. He said we should look at things carefully, notice what they are like and how they are different from other things we have seen before. We should pay attention to details because they will tell us something about how everything else works.
For example, if we observe that every time we see an object fall to earth it always falls toward its center, then we can use this observation as evidence that all objects fall toward their centers (universal truth).
