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Why did Aristotelian thinkers study individual examples to find universal patterns?

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Justus of Ghent: Aristotle — Aristotelianism *Aristotle*, oil on wood panel by Justus of Ghent, c. 1475; in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

In the context of Aristotelianism, thinkers studied individual examples to identify universal patterns because they viewed the world of perceived, particular things as the real world, rather than as imperfect copies of transcendent forms.12

For Aristotle, universals (katholou) are not separate, eternal entities but are constituents that inhere within individual things. Consequently, knowledge is acquired through an inductive process: by observing and analyzing contingent, individual occurrences, the human intellect can abstract the essential form—the universal structure—that defines a thing's nature.13456

This approach reflects Aristotle’s commitment to empiricism, where the mind grasps the universal by isolating essential elements from the sensory images of particulars. By studying these individual instances, Aristotelian thinkers sought to move beyond mere observation to discover the permanent, intelligible structures that govern the behavior and development of natural kinds.1576