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The object of this paper is to analyse the status of opinion (doxa) within Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge, taking as a starting-point the text of APo. I 33. In the course of the discussion, we show that science (episteme) and opinion can have the same object and even coincide in the selection of the same properties of the same object (both necessary and contingent), because the fundamental difference between science and opinion is not one of object. The fundamental difference between science and opinion is that science knows as a necessary truth what opinion states as a contingent fact. Incidentally, this conclusion implies that Aristotle subscribes the distinction between sentence and proposition (which is normally regarded as a discovery of the Stoics), since we can only make sense of Aristotle's theory by recognising that, for such a theory, science and opinion express different propositions even when they pronounce the same sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]