Unpacking 'why is there an eclipse?' into 'why is the moon darkened at opposition?' yields a judgment with distinct subject and predicate and thereby allows a middle term to be sought
In a statement, the subject is what you're talking about, and the predicate is what you're saying about it (in 'the sky is blue,' 'sky' is the subject and 'blue' is the predicate).
middle term(Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II,2)
A term that mediates between the subject and predicate of a two-place judgment and serves as the cause explaining why the predicate belongs to the subject; its discovery constitutes scientific knowledge.
unpacking(as used in philosophical analysis)
Breaking down a complex or compressed idea into smaller, simpler, more clearly separated parts so you can examine it better.
In all of this Fârâbî is broadly following the Aristotelian idea that, for any composite object X, we can ask “what is X?” and answer the question either by giving a definition of X spelling X out into many in-some-sense-constituents of X, or by giving some one such constituent of X, which is a partial answer to “what is X?”.[28] Fârâbî is also following Aristotle in insisting that all of the things which should be mentioned in the definition of X are causes of X’s being (“the thing by which [