Aristotle argued that in theory one could acquire knowledge of the natural world. But he did not stop there; he put his theories into practice. This volume of new essays shows how Aristotle's natural science and philosophical theories shed light on one another. The contributors engage with both biological and non-biological scientific works and with a wide variety of theoretical works, including Physics, Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, and Posterior Analytics. The essays focus on a number of themes, including the sort of explanation provided by matter; the relationship between matter, teleology, and necessity; cosmic teleology; how an organism's soul and faculties relate to its end; how to define things such as sleep, void, and soul; and the proper way to make scientific judgments. The resulting volume offers a rich and integrated view of Aristotle's science and shows how it fits with his larger philosophical theories.

This book provides a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s Parts of Animals. It presents the wealth of information provided in the biological works of Aristotle and revisits the detailed natural history observations that inform, and in many ways penetrate, the philosophical argument. It raises the question of how easy it is to clearly distinguish between what some might describe as “merely” biological and the philosophical. It explores the notion and consequences of describing the activity in which Aristotle is engaged as philosophical biology. The book examines such questions as: do readers of Aristotle have in mind organisms like Ascidians or Holothurians when trying to understand Aristotle’s argument regarding plant-like animals? Do they need the phenomena in front of them to understand the terms of the philosophical argument in a richer way? The discussion of plant-like animals is important in Aristotle because of the question about the continuum between plant and animal life. Where does Aristotle draw the line? Plant-like animals bring this question into focus and demonstrate the indeterminacy of any potential solution to the division. This analysis of Parts of Animals shows that the study of the nature of the organic world was Aristotle’s way into such ontological problems as the relationship between matter and form, or form and function, or the heterogeneity of the many different kinds of being.​

In Aristotle's teleological view of the world, natural things come to be and are present for the sake of some function or end (for example, wings are present in birds for the sake of flying). Whereas much of recent scholarship has focused on uncovering the (meta-)physical underpinnings of Aristotle's teleology and its contrasts with his notions of chance and necessity, this book examines Aristotle's use of the theory of natural teleology in producing explanations of natural phenomena. Close analyses of Aristotle's natural treatises and his Posterior Analytics show what methods are used for the discovery of functions or ends that figure in teleological explanations, how these explanations are structured, and how well they work in making sense of phenomena. The book will be valuable for all who are interested in Aristotle's natural science, his philosophy of science, and his biology.

Explores the extent to which Aristotle's ethical treatises employ the concepts, methods, and practices developed in his 'scientific' works.

This collection of groundbreaking new essays show how Aristotle's natural science illuminates fundamental topics in his philosophy.

This volume presents an interconnected set of sixteen essays, four of which are previously unpublished, by Allan Gotthelf—one of the leading experts in the study of Aristotle's biological writings. Gotthelf addresses three main topics across Aristotle's three main biological treatises. Starting with his own ground-breaking study of Aristotle's natural teleology and its illuminating relationship with the Generation of Animals, Gotthelf proceeds to the axiomatic structure of biological explanation (and the first principles such explanation proceeds from) in the Parts of Animals. After an exploration of the implications of these two treatises for our understanding of Aristotle's metaphysics, Gotthelf examines important aspects of the method by which Aristotle organizes his data in the History of Animals to make possible such a systematic, explanatory study of animals, offering a new view of the place of classification in that enterprise. In a concluding section on 'Aristotle as Theoretical Biologist', Gotthelf explores the basis of Charles Darwin's great praise of Aristotle and, in the first printing of a lecture delivered worldwide, provides an overview of Aristotle as a philosophically-oriented scientist, and 'a proper verdict' on his greatness as scientist.