Aristotle's biological works as scientific literature

This contribution deals with the question of where and why in his biological writings Aristotle uses dialogical elements, examining which dialogical structures can be found and what the meaning of the dialogical structures is in respect of the argumentative strategies used in literature. This discursive style has to be seen in relation to the importance of the dialectical method which was practiced in the Platonic Academy and on which Aristotle reflected in his Topics. For Aristotle the dialectical method also becomes the method of the investigator researching for himself. But more than that one can see the reason for the dialogical structures in Aristotle's writings in his attempt to combine the way of acquiring knowledge with the way of presenting knowledge. It can thus be said that at the moment in which the dialectical procedure is translated into the medium of writing, a fact-oriented presentation is also an addressee-oriented representation. Nowadays we are more accustomed to a technical literature which, after completing the first step of the deduction of knowledge, presents the results in a systematic and hierarchical way in its literary representation; in such technical literature, normally an individual's thought process is not set out in writing. Admittedly, with the application of the dialectical method and with the attempt to set down one's own thought process in the medium of writing, other elements also come in.