Themistius' treatment of Books 5-8 of Aristotle's Physics shows this commentator's capacity to identify, isolate and discuss the core ideas in Aristotle's account of change, his theory of the continuum, and his doctrine of the unmoved mover. His paraphrase offered his ancient students, as they will now offer his modern readers, an opportunity to encounter central features of Aristotle's physical theory, synthesized and epitomized in a manner that has always marked Aristotelian exegesis but was raised to a new level by the innovative method of paraphrase pioneered by Themistius. Taking selective but telling accounts of the earlier Peripatetic tradition (notably Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias), this commentator creates a framework that can still be profitably used by Aristotelian scholars today.

Paul Lettnick (Semitic languages, Free U., Amsterdam) has reconstructed Philoponus' commentary on Aristotle by translating it from annotations to an Arabic translation of the Physics itself; only fragments of the commentary are extant. J.O. Urmson (philosophy, Stanford U.) translates the commentary by Simplicius on Aristotle's view of the void. The two were rival neoplatonists writing in Greek in the sixth century. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The eighth book of Aristotle's Physics is the culmination of his theory of nature. He discusses not just physics, but the origins of the universe and the metaphysical foundations of cosmology and physical science. He moves from the discussion of motion in the cosmos to the identification of a single source and regulating principle of all motion, and so argues for the existence of a first 'unmoved mover'. Daniel Graham offers a clear, accurate new translation of this key text in the history of Western thought, and accompanies the translation with a careful philosophical commentary to guide the reader towards an understanding of the wealth of important and influential arguments and ideas that Aristotle puts forward.

Paul Lettinck has restored a lost text of Philoponus by translating it for the first time from Arabic (only limited fragments have survived in the original Greek). The text, recovered from annotations in an Arabic translation of Aristotle, is an abridging paraphrase of Philoponus' commentary on Physics Books 5-7, with two final comments on Book 8. The Simplicius text, which consists of his comments on Aristotle's treatment of the void in chapters 6-9 of Book 4 of the Physics, comes from Simplicius' huge commentary on Book 4. Simplicius' comments on Aristotle's treatment of place and time have been translated by J. O. Urmson in two earlier volumes of this series.

Aristotle's Physics is one of the least studied "great books"--physics has come to mean something entirely different than Aristotle's inquiry into nature, and stereotyped Medieval interpretations have buried the original text. Sach's translation is really the only one that I know of that attempts to take the reader back to the text itself. -- Leon Cass, University of Chicago