As Grice notes, Theophrastus applies the diaeretic method in his treatise De Sensibus.
The chief division—already found in corresponding passages in Aristotle—is between those who posit that knowledge is to be ascribed to similarity (‘like knows like’) and those who posit that it is to be ascribed to contrast (‘unlike knows unlike’).
Another division, not paralleled in Aristotle, also plays an important part in classifying and dialectically discussing the tenets, viz. between those who assume that there is a difference between thinking and sense-perception, and those who do not.
Finally, within each class the philosophers are treated in a sequence determined by the number of senses that are posited (category of quantity).
The last philosopher to be discussed is Democritus, not Plato.
This is because Democritus according to Theophrastus assumes that knowledge comes about through both similarity and contrast.
This presentation, viz. a division, or divisions, of contrasting tenets (names included) dealing with specific issues, followed by an exceptional (or compromise) view, which fails to fit this division, is not a standard feature of Aristotle’s dialectical overviews.
However we do find partial anticipations of this methodology in Aristotle, e.g. in the second chapter of De Anima I he opposes three views concerned with the principles that constitute the soul: some hold that these are corporeal, others that they are incorporeal, while a third group posits a blend of corporeal and incorporeal principles.
In Aristotle however we do not find the strings of detailed sortings of individual tenets followed by a compromise or maverick opinion typical of numerous Placita chapters, while Theophrastus’ presentation in the De Sensibus is in this respect close to the Placita routine. [5] Consequently, we may submit that it is Aristotle’s dialectical methodology, as revised by Theophrastus, which determines the structure of large sections of the Placita. It should be noted, moreover, that the introduction of ps-Plutarch’s Placita, that ‘according to Aristotle and Theophrastus and almost all the Peripatetics a perfect human being should devote himself to problems in the fields of natural philosophy and ethics’. Theophrastus and Aristotle, then, were used in this way. An example: The chapters in Aëtius (Placita 3.9–15) and Cicero (Academics 2.122) dealing with a number of various and occasionally even bizarre views concerning the position, motion, shape, etc. of the earth in the last resort patently derive, as to their main themes and oppositions and even as to some telling details, from a chapter in Aristotle’s On the Heavens (2.13) (Mansfeld 1992). Cicero here mentions Theophrastus by name; he therefore may well be involved too, as an intermediary source. But we have no further evidence concerning his contribution in this particular instance. It is rather amazing that the great Diels, who clearly was aware of the importance of the diaeretic method in Aristotle’s writings and in Theophrastus’ De Sensibus, failed to apply this insight to the Placita literature. The diaphonic organization, moreover, of chapters containing tenets that are listed according to criteria determined by various divisions obviously determines not only the presentation but also, to some extent, the contents of the material. It would seem that, just as is the case for Aristotle, also in that of Theophrastus more than one treatise provided material that ultimately found a home in the Placita, namely at the very least the Physikai Doxai, the Physics, the De sensibus, and the Metarsiology.
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