ABSTRACT
In this chapter it is shown that also in the textual tradition of the Organon, scribes and readers already introduced, at the early stages of the transmission, corrections, changes, and additions to Aristotle’s text, which subsequently, due to a process of contamination, spread over most, sometimes all, of the extant sources. After providing a basic stemma for the textual tradition of the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, which allows us to identify patterns of contamination as well, the author discusses a number of examples from these works, highlighting that also obviously correct readings can be (almost) pushed out of existence. Scribes and readers changed the text for several reasons: to correct readings which seemed incorrect to them, to align the text with their interpretation of it, to complete lists, to make the text easier to read, and even to change the logic of Aristotle’s text - but also inadvertently. Two appendices discuss a few examples from the Analytics and a number of proposals by Brunschwig for striking phrases and sentences from the text of the Topics, despite being present in all extant manuscripts and translations.
