Aristotle

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ARISTOTLE

(b. Stagira in Chalcidice, 384 BCE; d. Chalcis, 322 BCE)

theory of science, physics, cosmology, meteorology, psychology, biology. For the original article on Aristotle see DSB, vol. 1.

The original DSB entry on Aristotle was penned by four notable scholars with different backgrounds and areas of expertise, who wrote autonomous essays on:

his scientific method, physics, and cosmology (G. E. L. Owen),
his natural history and zoology (David M. Balme),
his anatomy and physiology (Leonard G. Wilson), and
the Aristotelian tradition and its influence on the history of science (L. Minio-Paluello).

Since these entries were written, Aristotle’s investigations of the natural world have been the object of a great deal of high-quality scholarship. One of the lessons of that scholarship, to which Balme was a major contributor, is that the above division of topics obscures more about Aristotle’s natural science than it clarifies. The distinctions marked in the early twenty-first century by zoology,natural history, anatomy, and physiology map poorly on to Aristotle’s investigation of animals; and the work that conventionally bears the English title Physics will be badly misunderstood by anyone who imagines it is Aristotle’s attempt to do what is today called physics.

In this postscript, Aristotle’s general theory of scientific knowledge (as presented primarily in his Posterior Analytics) will be discussed separately from his contributions to natural science. Within this latter group, those texts that present and defend Aristotle’s distinctive principles for natural science (especially Physica, Generatione et Corruptione, and De Partibus Animalium I) will be distinguished from the application of these principles to investigations of distinctive domains of the natural world (Meteorologica, De Partibus Animalium II–IV, De Generatione Animalium I–V,Historia Animalium I–X, De Motu Animalium, De Incessu Animalium, Parva Naturalia, De Caelo I–IV). The majority of Aristotle’s contributions to natural science are devoted to the study of animals; and this reflects Aristotle’s view that the study of living things is central to the investigation of nature. Therefore this postscript will focus on what is conventionally referred to as Aristotle’s biology. Ideally, because Aristotle claimed that knowledge about the soul contributes greatly to the study of nature (402a4), this should also include his De Anima (On the Soul), but there will be only passing references to it.

Theory of Science . Beginning with the eighth “Symposium Aristotelicum,” in 1978, the Posterior Analytics(APo.) has been studied more intensely than at any time since the Renaissance. That research led to revaluations of three assumptions of the previous DSB entry: (1) that there is a serious conflict between Aristotle’s theory of science and his practice; (2) that this may be due to the theory taking mathematics, rather than natural science, as its model; and (3) that the APo. has little to say about scientific inquiry. Each of these views has now been seriously challenged.

To develop systematic views about scientific investigation, one first needs a concept of the goal to be achieved, and recent research suggests APo. I be thought of as Aristotle’s articulation of that goal. The goal is a system of concepts and propositions organized hierarchically, ultimately resting on knowledge of the essential natures of the objects of an established kind and certain other necessary first principles. These definitions and principles form the basis of causal explanations of propositions identifying attributes that belong to the objects being investigated per se, in virtue of their natures. A system of formal proof and validity is outlined in the Prior Analytics, providing logical standards for scientific explanation. It should be possible to display scientific explanations as syllogisms in which the “middle term” identifies the cause in virtue of which an attribute belongs necessarily to its subject. For example, having interior angles equal to two right angles belongs to all triangles in virtue of something essential to being a triangle (APo. I. 4, 5). It belongs necessarily to all equilateral triangles as well—but only because they are triangles. The middle term of a scientific demonstration of this property will refer to that essential property of triangles in virtue of which it belongs to all triangles.

Aristotle, in APo. II, discussed how to achieve this goal: how to achieve knowledge of essences (expressed in definitions) and how the search for essences is related to the search for causal explanations (expressed in the form of demonstrations). Perceptual experience gives us a grasp of the target of inquiry that is not yet scientific knowledge as characterized in book I, but does provide a sufficient grasp on the subject to direct further inquiry. We may begin by asking whether there really is an object of inquiry with a nature and a stable set of properties to be explained (APo.II. 1, 89b23–25). Once we have grounds for believing that “thunder” signifies a single, recurrent natural phenomenon, for example, we may go on to inquire into its cause, which is precisely to find out what thunder really is (APo.II. 1, 89b29–31). The result can be expressed as a definition or as a demonstration. Thunder, which signifies a certain kind of noise in the clouds is, in essence, the noise caused by fire being extinguished in clouds. Such a noise is present whenever extinction of fire is present; thus when extinction of fire is present in the clouds, thunder is present in the clouds (APo.II. 10, 94a4–8).

In this discussion, thunder and eclipses are his primary examples of natural inquiry, but Aristotle also provided an extended biological example, the seasonal loss of leaves in broad-leaved plants. From experience, one learns that certain trees lose their leaves seasonally. The first step toward scientific understanding will be to determine whether this is a single phenomenon. Aristotle suggested that to determine this one must search for other properties shared by plants that lose their leaves, being broad-leaved, for example. Such correlations provide good reason to think that there is a kind to which leaf loss belongs as such. He closed chapter 16 of Book II with the following summary:

Hence in these cases the middle term and what it is explanatory of must be equal and must convert. For example, why do trees shed their leaves? If it is because of solidification of the moisture, then if a tree sheds it leaves solidification must hold, and if solidification holds—not of anything whatever but of a tree—then the tree must shed its leaves. (98b35–39)

Since the whole point of the example is that not all trees shed their leaves but only those with broad leaves, “tree” here must stand in for “trees with broad leaves.” Something essential to being broad-leaved causes loss of leaves—Aristotle here suggested that there is a seasonal solidification of moisture at the leaf juncture (presumably cutting off nutrition to the leaves). As with thunder, a causal explanation of leaf loss is also an account of its essence (APo. II. 17, 99a22–23).

There is, then, a sophisticated theory of inquiry here, and research done since the publication of the DSB suggests that it accords rather well with the practices revealed in Aristotle’s scientific investigation of animals. This research will now be briefly summarized.

Foundations of Natural Science. Four works in particular are devoted to the articulation and defense of Aristotle’s distinctive set of principles for investigating the natural world: Physics, On the Parts of Animals I, Generation and Corruption I, and On the Soul I –II. Aristotle was at great pains to distinguish the science of nature from two other theoretical disciplines, mathematics and first philosophy (metaphysics)

. The work typically referred to as Physics is a collection of books aimed at articulating and defending a unique set of first principles and causes for the science of nature. In the original DSB entry, G. E. L. Owen stressed Aristotle’s method of reviewing “the common convictions and common linguistic usage of his contemporaries, supplemented by the views of other thinkers.” Because, Aristotle claimed, these common convictions were “storehouses of experience,” this “dialectical” methodology (which he also saw at work in De Caelo and Generation and Corruption) was aimed at “saving the phenomena.”

There is no doubt that when Aristotle enters a domain that is well trodden, previous views on the topic being investigated are critically reviewed; but typically these views create impediments to progress, aporiai, not phenomena to be saved. The Physics is an extended argument aimed at overcoming those impediments and providing a new foundation for the science of nature.

Consider in outline the first four books of Physics (Ph.).

The chief concerns of Book I are first to defend the assumption that natural things are subject to change against the Eleatics and then to articulate the number and kind of principles required to properly characterize any kind of change. This involves a critical review of the assumptions of previous thinkers, but Aristotle’s final position was profoundly different from those he rejected.

It must be, because Aristotle aimed to defend a kind of change rejected by virtually all his predecessors, the unqualified coming to be of a substantial being, such as the development of an animal or plant. In such cases, the stable subject underlying qualitative, quantitative or spatial change is now the outcome of a change, raising profound questions about what underlies the change.

Aristotle introduced his concepts of potentiality and actuality and matter and form in order to deal with this problem. (A full defense of unqualified generation comes in Generation and Corruption I, and in book II he applied the results to the transformation of the elements.)

With the general principles of change delineated, Ph. II chapter 1 argues that the distinctive mark of natural beings is that they have their own inherent sources and causes of change—indeed this is their nature (physis). The remainder of book II explores the implications of that account of nature. Chapter 2: What are the inherent sources in a natural being? (Answer: matter and form.)

Chapter 3: How many causes are there and of what sort? (Answer: four: matter, form, moving cause, end.) Chapters 4–6: Is chance to be included among the causes, as some have claimed? (Answer: no; but causality is involved in chance events). Chapter 7: Because there are only two natures, are all four of these causes involved in nature? (Answer: yes; but three of the four involve form and the fourth matter.) Chapter 8: In particular, how can either of these natures act for the sake of an end? (Answer: “Since nature is twofold, nature as matter and nature as form, and the latter is an end, and everything else is for the end, the cause as that for the sake of which must be form” [199a31–33].) Chapter 9: But can that view be compatible with things happening of necessity? (Answer: yes, because beside the necessity associated with matter there is a necessity associated with natural ends.) Once more, the entire book is an exploration of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s unique and unprecedented views about what it is to have and to be a nature.

The introduction to Ph.III–IV (200b12–25) again stresses the foundational nature of this work. Because nature is a source of change, Aristotle explained, we need to be clear on exactly what change is. And because it will turn out that it is continuous, and the continuous is argued by some to be infinite, we must determine whether the infinite exists and if so in what sense. And because some hold that change requires place, time, and void, we must investigate these as well. This is, indeed, the program for the remainder of books III–IV.

In sum: the Physics has the character of what, in the early twenty-first century, would be called philosophy of science—explorations of concepts such as change, nature, causality, explanation, teleology, necessity, chance, space, time, and infinity. The exploration of nature requires that we be secure about our starting points; these books aim at establishing the proper starting points for any natural investigation. And while a preliminary step in each investigation is to review previous views on the subject, Aristotle’s final position rarely saved the opinions of his predecessors or of common sense. Invariably Aristotle used innovative philosophical tools to forge an unprecedented position on the foundations of natural science.

On the Parts of Animals I (PA I) was yet another foundational work, in this case a philosophical exploration of the standards required for a successful scientific study of living things. Its continuity with Ph.II is often correctly noted. To cite just one example, the discussions of teleology and conditional necessity in these two works are the only theoretical discussions of these topics in the corpus, and they complement one another in detail. It is less commonly noted that this book is also the bridge between the account of scientific knowledge in the Analytics and Aristotle’s actual presentation of the results of his investigations of animals. For example, he argued for the priority of goal causation to efficient causation on grounds it is by stating the goal that one identifies the defining nature in things that are generated (639b13–21). And during his defense of conditional necessity—the idea that certain materials and processes are necessary for the realization of an end—he noted that this implies a different manner of demonstration than in other theoretical sciences (639b22–640a9).

The form of an organism is assumed to be its soul (in the sense defended in the De Anima, the functional capacities for nutrition, reproduction, perception, locomotion, and thought). But after noting this, a model for biological explanation emerges that applies the general ideals of the Analytics to this domain: a small number of explanatorily basic features are present simply because that is what it is to be that sort of animal; one does not further explain why birds are flyers or fish swimmers. In all other cases an attribute (such as a part or some feature of a part) must be shown to belong to the animals it belongs to either because its life requires or is made better by it, or because it is necessitated by the material nature of the animal.

On the Parts of Animals I, 2–3 follows with an attack on dichotomous division (as found in late Platonic dialogues and in fragments of Speusippus) as inadequate for organizing the biological world. Out of this attack emerges a new method of division, whereby general kinds (e.g., bird, fish, insect, soft-shelled animal) with many correlated differentiae are taken as the starting point of division. Division proceeds from these general differentiae (wing, leg) and articulates increasingly specific forms of each difference. If all birds have beaks, “beak” will stand at the head of a division into increasingly specific forms of beak. Division appears to play the same limited role of properly ordering and relating differences that it is given in APo., yet there are numerous innovations intended for biological application. One can see division of this kind in practice in the Historia Animalium (HA)I–X.

How are the general kinds assumed by division identified? Aristotle turned to this question in PA I. 4. By attending to what led people to formulate the concepts of bird and fish, we can identify the principles to be deployed. Bird refers to a collection of organisms sharing a set of perceptually apparent features (beak, a peculiar form of bipedalism, feathers, wings, flight, etc.) each of which vary along a number of perceptual continua (dimensions, texture, color, density, etc.). With respect to these shared features, birds differ only in degree from each other, while they differ in kind from, say, fish—lung and gill, or feather and scale differ in kind, not merely in degree. Thus division under each of these general features remains within a determinate range and it is by attending to these general, correlated features that the “great kinds” (megista gene) of animals are identified. Further study will uncover their natures, the living functions for the sake of which the parts are structured and arranged as they are.

PA I. 5 first provides a stirring defense of the value of the scientific study of life when carried out in the proper, philosophical spirit (644b22-645a36). Then (645b1–36) it integrates its results, showing how a division of biological functions, paralleling that of the system of animal parts: “So the body is in a way for the sake of the soul, and the parts are for the sake of the functions in relation to which each of them developed by nature” (645b18–20).

Theory in Practice. Recent work on the model of science in the APo. and on the theoretical foundations of natural science developed in Physics and PA I helps us better to understand the way Aristotle’s scientific investigations are organized. The theory of inquiry in APo. II is explicitly invoked at the very beginning of a number of Aristotle’s animal studies. HA, for example, opens by introducing the kinds of differences among animals to be studied, and then states the purpose of the investigation to come and where it fits in the entire scientific study of animals. We must, he said,

first grasp the differences and the attributes belonging to all animals. After this, we must attempt to discover the causes. For it is natural to carry out the investigation in this way, beginning with the inquiry into each thing; for from these inquiries it becomes clear both about which things the demonstration should be and from which things it should proceed. (HA I. 6, 491a7–14)

The term inquiry in this quote (and in what follows) translates historia, and throughout the biological works it is used to refer to the precausal stage of inquiry discussed in APo. That, rather than what we would call a natural history, is the purpose of the inquiry reported in HA. If “History of Animals” were not so entrenched as its title, it would be far better to refer to it as “Inquiries into Animals.”

Understanding HA in light of APo. and PA I helps to explain a number of the puzzling features, some of which Balme pointed to in his contribution to the DSB entry: its organization around multiple, correlated differentiae rather than animal kinds; the virtual absence of the language of causal investigation, vocabulary that is pervasive in the other (causal) treatises; its interest in identifying great kinds (megista gene) and widest class generalizations (e.g., “all that breathe in and out—as many as take in air—all these have a lung, windpipe and esophagus” (HA II. 15, 506a2–3). A number of scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had argued that most or all of HA was written after Aristotle’s death, and in his DSB entry Balme endorsed this claim. By the time he had prepared the introduction to the Loeb edition of HA VII–X (Balme, 1991), however, he had rejected these arguments, at least in part because of the realization that many of them depended on a misunderstanding of HA’s structure and purpose.

Conversely, looking back to what is reported in HA, the beginnings of On Animal Locomotion (704b7–10) and PA II (646a8–12) identify themselves as reporting the results of causal investigations, referring back to the “inquiries” (historiai) as accounts of the data in need of explanation. This is not mere window dressing. PA II–IV and HA are focused intently on giving accounts of the essential natures of the parts, specifying the functional differences for the sake of which the structural and material differences are present. On the Generation of Animals (GA) begins by explaining the differences among the parts related to generation in the first half of book I, and proceeds to a causal explanation of animal generation, organized according to the appropriate differentiae: live-bearing, egg-laying, or spontaneously generated. Approaching Aristotle’s science through his own theory of science, rather than through our modern categories of natural history versus anatomy and physiology, has provided a better understanding of its goals and organization.

The discussion of anatomy and physiology contributed to DSB by L. G. Wilson focused on Aristotle’s discussion of the vasculature and heart in HA. It provides valuable insights into Aristotle’s likely method of dissection and its limitations. There is, however, little said about cardiac function, or about Aristotle’s general approach to the parts of animals. An analysis of Aristotle’s causal theory of the heart illustrates his general method of causal investigation of animal parts.

Aristotle began by discussing what is true of all hearts as such, and then moves on to explain the differentiation of hearts in different kinds of blooded animals. Aristotle’s general account of the heart concludes (1) that the heart is present for the sake of originating blood, (2) that it is also the primary perceptive part, and (3) that it is thus the primary organ of the perceptive capacity of soul, the capacity essential to being an animal (PA III. 4, 666a34–36). It is part of Aristotle’s explicit theory that many animals that perceive lack hearts. PA III. 4, however, is part of the discussion of the internal organic parts of blooded animals. Aristotle turned to the bloodless animals in book IV, and when he did so he noted that they must have an analogue of the heart and blood (cf. PA IV. 5 678b1–7).

The definition of a heart and the explanation of why animals with hearts have hearts are intertwined in just the way APo. would lead us to expect. Once this general explanation for why all blooded animals have a heart was in place, he went on to explain differences in its location (666b1–12), sinews (666b13–20), number of cavities (666b21–35), “articulation” (667a6–11), size (667a11– 22), and even the relation of these differences to the animal’s character (667a12–22). Just before concluding, he discussed the critical status of the heart for life and death (667a32–667b12).

As in his study of the heart, Aristotle’s method of finding the widest class to which an attribute belongs per se in order to focus causal investigation can also be illustrated by his account of why certain animals have multiple stomachs (ruminants). Aristotle began by noting that this trait is correlated with cloven hoofs, horns, and a dearth of upper teeth, and this level of similarity is sufficient for Aristotle to seek a single explanation for it. Aristotle typically identified the animals with this complex of structures in common by a nominal phrase that literally translates as “the ones that do not have both rows of teeth (ta mê amphôdonta)” (cf. PA III. 2, 663b29–664a3, III. 14, 674a32–b18; APo.II. 14, 98a13–19). As with the APo. example of broad-leaved trees, this group is identified as a result of the search for that demonstration. The lack of teeth is due to the diversion of material suitable for teeth to make hoofs and horns. Because of the resulting lack of teeth, food enters the digestive track in a relatively unprocessed state, requiring a more complex system of stomachs to fully digest it.

Another grouping that Aristotle investigated that does not constitute a previously identified kind is the group of animals that possess lungs and also share a number of correlated features—windpipe, esophagus, neck, epiglottis (or equivalent)—all of which can be explained by reference to breathing. Aristotle concluded his discussion of the lung by claiming that, even though animals with a lung do not constitute an identified kind, the lung is nevertheless part of their being (ousia)—as much, he insisted, as having feathered wings is part of the being of birds (PA III. 6, 669b8-12).

Tradition and Influence. The entry of Minio-Paluello for the original DSB entry was comprehensive through 1970. However, between 1970 and the early twenty-first century there has been a revolution in our understanding of the Aristotelian tradition. Theophrastus, Aristotle’s younger coworker and successor as head of the Lyceum, has been the subject of systematic and comprehensive investigation of primary sources and a related series of conferences, under the general guidance of William Fortenbaugh, during the past twenty-five years. Similarly, under the general guidance of Richard Sorabji, the Greek commentaries on Aristotle are being translated with annotation into English, introducing them to a new audience and leading to a significant scholarly reappraisal of their role in transmitting and reshaping Aristotle’s ideas. Moreover, the systematic study of the Syriac-Arabic tradition reported on by Minio-Paluello, which not only transmitted Aristotelianism but transformed it in a variety of ways, has expanded. The Aristoteles Latinus and Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus Projects aim to publish editions of all the Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew translations of Aristotle from Greek (as well as Latin translations of Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew translations) and has already published many volumes of his scientific treatises. An annotated English translation of Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus has made this great work more widely available. These projects are only part of the transformation of the field of medieval philosophy due both to a wealth of newly edited texts and a deepening understanding of the historical influences on it and of the complexity of its relationship with Renaissance Aristotelianism.

Under the influence of scholars such as Charles Schmitt, Charles Lohr, and William Wallace, there has been an unprecedented growth in our understanding of the Aristotelian tradition in the Renaissance. This point is exemplified by briefly discussing what has happened during these intervening years in our understanding of the tradition and influence of Aristotle’s “biological” works, many of them referred to collectively during the medieval period as De Animalibus.

The first chapter of Schmitt’s groundbreaking Aristotle and the Renaissance bore the title “Renaissance Aristotelianisms.” His work targeted the widespread tendency to, as he later put it, “lump all Aristotelian traditions together as part of the old medieval world” (p. 91) and to seek the roots of modernity in an eclectic mix of reactions against it. In the fourth chapter, on “Eclectic Aristotelianism,” he spent a great deal of time discussing the many distinct ways, in various cultures, that Aristotelianism was comfortably infused with all sorts of other currents. In discussing Italy, for example, he mentioned the very different approaches of Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo. During the past decade, Stefano Perfetti, of Pisa, has done a meticulous study of their respective commentaries on Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium (as well as that of Niccolò Tomeo), giving rich and concrete meaning to Schmitt’s point. Though all three would claim to be part of an Aristotelian tradition, they brought to their studies differences in methods and philosophical assumptions that belie the uniformity that, even in 1983, historians of science took for granted.

Those works, which were based on the printed Latin translation of the biological works by Theodorus Gaza that first appeared in 1476, form part of the background to a broad and eclectic Aristotelian reaction to the Galenism that had dominated the theory and practice of medicine. Gradually, practitioners of human dissection became the sources of empirical challenges to Galenic orthodoxy. In Aristotle’s animal studies they found a radically different justification for dissection. The study of animals was a central part of natural philosophy, not a practice ancillary to medicine. It was a universal and comparative study of parts in whatever animals had them, not an art restricted to the investigation of health and disease in humans. Those who taught it, then, had the right to be considered professors of natural philosophy, and not merely “demonstrators.”

This movement gained enormously from the assistance of artists and printers in the production of dramatically presented anatomical drawings and could point to texts in Aristotle to indicate an ancient origin for this practice. By the time William Harvey entered Padua (perhaps already prepared by reading the eclectic Aristotelianism of John Case in England) for his medical training in 1599, the likes of Andreas Vesalius and Realdo Colombo had transformed the subject. His own mentor, Fabricius ab’Aquapendente, was teaching and practicing philosophical anatomy—an anatomy that was universal in scope, comparative in method, and theoretical in its aims. It was the philosophical and theoretical basis for the art of medicine. Under an unmistakable Aristotelian influence, the places of the two disciplines had been reversed.

Schmitt saw Harvey, whose work on the movement of the heart and on animal generation is a high point of the new “experimental philosophy,” as an exemplar of an eclecticism that integrated new developments within an Aristotelian framework. Another example of the same tendency is found in Aristotelians such as Christoph Clavius and Christopher Scheiner who, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, drawing on Aristotle’s discussions of the “more natural of the mathematical sciences” (optics, harmonics, astronomy, mechanics), embraced the application of mathematics to the study of nature.

In light of the scholarship on every aspect of the Aristotelian tradition since the 1970s, Minio-Paluello’s statement in the original DSB entry that “Aristotle’s influence [in the province of science] is very limited, or effective only in the sense that mistakes, eliciting opposition, criticism, and new solutions to old and new problems, are the starting point of scientific progress,” (p. 267) needs to be seriously reconsidered.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

For texts, translations, and secondary literature published before 1970, consult the original DSB bibliographies compiled by Owen, Balme, Wilson, and Minio-Paluello. The following bibliography is restricted to works published since then and is highly selective. Many of the works referenced, however, have extensive bibliographies on their subjects. A reasonably comprehensive bibliography of recent primary and secondary literature (through 1995) on Aristotle can be found in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle edited by Jonathan Barnes. The following bibliography is subdivided according to the subdivisions in the text. At the end of the bibliography, a number of valuable entries are noted related to these topics in the online scholarly resource, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Each is a commendable introduction to these topics and each contains a helpful bibliography and links to related cites.

ARISTOTLE

Theory of Science: Works by Aristotle: Texts, Translations, and Commentaries Analytica Posteriora. Translated and edited by Wolfgang Detel. 2 vols. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993.

Posterior Analytics. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Topics I and VIII: With Excerpts from Related Texts. Translated and edited by Robin Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

THEORY OF SCIENCE: OTHER SOURCES

Berti, Enrico, ed. Aristotle on Science: “The Posterior Analytics” Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum Held in Padua from September 7 to 15, 1978. Padua, Italy: Editrice Antenore, 1981.

Charles, David. Aristotle on Meaning and Essence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Ferejohn, Michael. The Origins of Aristotelian Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.

Kullmann, W. Wissenschaft und Methode. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974.

Lear, Jonathon. Aristotle and Logical Theory. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Lloyd, G. E. R. Aristotelian Explorations. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

McKirihan, Richard, Jr. Principles and Proofs: Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstrative Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Foundations of Natural Science: Works by Aristotle: Texts, Translations, and Commentaries Physique. Translated and edited by Pierre Pellegrin. Paris: G.F. Flammarion, 2000.

Physics: Books I and II. Translated and edited by William Charlton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Physics: Books III–IV. Translated and edited by Edward Hussey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Physics: Book VIII. Translated and edited by Daniel Graham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Foundations of Natural Science: Other Sources

Bostock, David. Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s “Physics.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Coope, Ursula. Time for Aristotle: “Physics IV.” 10–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

De Grandt, F., and P. Souffrin, eds. La Physique d’Aristote et les conditions d’une science de la nature. Paris: Vrin, 1991.

Falcon, Andrea. Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Gill, Mary Louise. Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Haas, Frans A. J. de, and Jaap Mansfeld, eds. 2004. Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption Book I. Symposium Aristotelicum XV Deurne, Netherlands 1999. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Johnson, Monte Ransome. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Judson, Lindsay, ed. Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Quarantotto, Diana. Causa Finale, Sostanza, Essenza in Aristotele: Saggio sulla struttura dei processi teleologici naturali e sulla funzione del telos. Elenchos: 46. Naples, Italy: Bibliopolis, 2005.

Wardy, Robert. The Chain of Change: A Study of Aristotle’s “Physics” VII. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Waterlow [Broadie], Sarah. Nature, Change, and Agency in Aristotle’s “Physics”: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Natural Science/Biolog y: Works by Aristotle: Texts, Translations, and Commentaries

Balme, David M. Historia Animalium, Volume I (Books I–X: Text). Prepared for publication by Allan Gotthelf. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

———.De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I with passages from II.1–3. Prepared for publication by Allan Gotthelf. Clarendon Aristotle Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

———.History of Animals VII–X. Prepared for publication by Allan Gotthelf. Loeb Classical Library. London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Lanza, Diego, and Mario Vegetti. Opere biologiche. Turin, Italy: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1971.

Lennox, James G. Aristotle. On the Parts of Animals I–I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Louis, Pierre. Météorologiques. Collection des universities de France. Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles lettres,” 1982.

Migliori, Maurizio. La generazione e la corruzione. Filosophi anitichi. Naples, Italy: L. Loffredo, 1976.

Pepe, Lucio. Aristotele. Meteorologia: Testo Greco a fronte. Bompiani testi a fronte: 81. Milan, Italy: Edizione Bompiani, 2003.

Natural Science/Biology: Other Sources Gotthelf, Allan, and James G. Lennox, eds. Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Kullmann, Wolfgang, and Sabine Föllinger, eds. Aristotelishche Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergbnisse; Akten des Symposions über Aristoteles’ Biologie vom 24.–28 Juli 1995 in der Werner-Reimers-Stiftung in Bad Hamburg. Philosophie der Antike, vol. 6. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.

Lennox, James G. Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Pellegrin, Pierre. Aristotle’s Classification of Animals: Biology and the Conceptual Unity of the Aristotelian Corpus. Translated by Anthony Preus, rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

THE ARISTOTELIAN TRADITION

Even a selective bibliography on this topic is impossible. The edited texts alone that have been produced in since 1970 would run for many pages. Below are some valuable collections of essays and some monographs that provide an overview of some aspects of the topic. But for those who are seriously interested, consulting the various Web sites listed at the end of the bibliography is advised.

Di Liscia, Daniel, Eckhard Kessler, and Charlotte Methuen, eds. Method and Order in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature: The Aristotelian Commentary Tradition. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1997.

Gill, Mary Louise, and James G. Lennox, eds. Self-Motion from Aristotle to Newton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uniersity Press, 1994.

Kithcell, Kenneth F., Jr., and Ireven Michael Resnick. Albertus Magnus on Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica. 2 vols. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Lohr, C. H. Latin Aristotelian Commentators II. Florence, Italy: Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, 1988.

Schmitt, Charles D. Aristotle and the Renaissance. Martin Classical Lectures, vol. 27. Cambridge, MA: Oberlin College by Harvard University Press, 1983.

———, Eckhard Kessler, and Quentin Skinner, eds. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Sharples, R. W., ed. Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism? Ashgate Keeling Series in Ancient Philosophy. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001. Steel, Carlos, Guy Guldentops, and Pieter Beullens, eds.

Aristotle’s Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Mediaevalia Loveniensia: ser. 1, studia 27. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1999.

Wildberg, Christian. Philoponus: Against Aristotle, on the Eternity of the World. London: Duckworth, 1987.

Revival of Aristotelianism in the Renaissance

Bylebyl, Jerome. “The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century.” In Health, Medicine and Morality in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Charles Webster. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Cunningham, Andrew. “Fabricius and the ‘Aristotle project’ in Anatomical Teaching and Research at Padua.” In The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, edited by Andrew Wear, Roger K. French, and I. M. Lonie. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Frank, Robert G., Jr. Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

French, Roger K. William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Schmitt, Charles B. Reappraisals in Renaissance Thought. London: Variorum Reprints, 1989.

Wear, Andrew, Roger K. French, and I. M. Lonie, eds. The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.