              Not all rigorous reasoning qualifies as scientific. Indeed, little of Aristotle’s extant writing conforms to the demands for scientific presentation laid down in the Posterior Analytics. As he recognizes, we often find ourselves reasoning from premises which have the status of endoxa, opinions widely believed or endorsed by the wise, even though they are not known to be necessary. Still less often do we reason having first secured the first principles of our domain of inquiry. So, we need some ‘method by which we will be able to reason deductively about any matter proposed to us on the basis of endoxa, and to give an account of ourselves [when we are under examination by an interlocutor] without lapsing into contradiction’ (Top. 100a18–20).   This method he characterizes as dialectic. 