This collection of essays highlights Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval developments in the discussion of scientific method and argument in the comment(arie)s on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and related methodological passages in the Aristotelian corpus. Despite the importance of these discussions, the larger part of the commentary tradition on the Posterior Analytics still remains uncharted. The contributors to this volume identify and explore three important strands of interpretation, viz. (1) the reception of Aristotle’s logic of inquiry and theory of concept formation in Posterior Analytics II 19; (2) the influence of the Posterior Analytics on the evaluation of metaphysics as a science; and (3) the reception of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration, definition, and causation in Posterior Analytics book II.

Reading Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas: His Commentaries on Aristotle’s Major Works offers an original and decisive work for the understanding of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. For decades his commentaries on the major works of Aristotle have been the subject of lively discussions. Are his commentaries faithful and reliable expositions of the Stagirite's thought or do they contain Thomas’s own philosophy and are they read through the lens of Thomas’s own Christian faith and in doing so possibly distorting Aristotle? In order to be able to provide clarity and offer a nuanced response to this question a careful study of all the relevant texts is needed. This is precisely what the author sets out do to in this work. Each chapter is devoted to one of the twelve commentaries Thomas wrote on major works of Aristotle including both his massive and influential commentaries on the Metaphysics, Physics and Nicomachean Ethics as well as lesser known commentaries. Elders places Thomas’s commentary in its historical context, reviews the Greek, Arabic and Latin translation and reception of Aristotle’s text as well as contemporary interpretations thereof and presents the reader with a thorough presentation and analysis of the content of the commentary, drawing attention to all the places where Thomas intervenes and makes special observations. In this way the reader can study Aristotle’s treatises with Thomas as guide. The conclusion reached is that Thomas’s commentaries are a masterful and faithful presentation of Aristotle’s thought and of that of Thomas himself. Thomas’s Christian faith does not falsify Aristotle’s text, but gives occasionally an outlook at what lies behind philosophical thought.

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements of logical validity and explanatoriness which he first formulated. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27-34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science concerns the same scientific genus as the superordinate, but a different species. This volume contains the first English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

Stephen Gersch charts the influence of the late Greek philosopher Proclus from his own lifetime down to the Renaissance (500-1600 CE).

This book presents cutting-edge concepts on the question of trust. Written by leading experts, it investigates a paradoxical feature of contemporary society: while information and communication technologies, on the one hand, and scientific discourses, on the other, can promote more informed participation in public and democratic life, they have also led to a dramatic decline in our communicative and cooperative skills. The book analyzes the notion of trust from an interdisciplinary perspective by combining the normative (continental) and empirical (Anglo-American) approaches and by considering the political, epistemological, and historical transformations in the interpersonal relationships sparked by new technologies. Using trust as a model, it then investigates and clarifies the new types of participation that are made possible by scientific and technological advances.

This volume presents the results of the ESAP-HYELE conference on "e;Aristotle, Physics 7.3: What is Alteration?"e;, which took place in Vitznau, Switzerland, 12-15 February 2007. The contributors are part of a team of Aristotelian scholars who came together for the first time in 1995, and have since been meeting every spring. The purpose of their gatherings is to read and interpret line by line a short, but important chapter of Aristotle's works. In this way, attention is focused on key texts of particular exegetic and theoretical interest. Each session starts with the presentation of a translation and a first analysis of the main problems; these then become the subject of an intense debate which illustrates the different schools of thought and methodological approaches. Over the years, the confrontation of these different points of view has had a beneficiary effect on scholarship and has stimulated research activity worldwide. On the occasion of the Vitznau meeting in 2007, it was decided for the first time to publish the results of the meeting in order to make them accessible to a wider public of scholars and students. The present volume is the fruit of this common effort.