The powerpoint for this week's lecture can be downloaded here

The simplest summary of the scientific revolution is that it was the overthrow of the Aristotelean approach to the study of nature. Even if we reject the idea of the scientific revolution, we need to understand Aristotle if we want to understand early modern science.

Aristotle was a student of Plato who flourished in the fourth century BC. He wrote on many topics, from logic to politics, but his libri naturales--his books dealing with the natural world--were particular influential. In these books he gave a distinctive account of scientific explanation and of the basic components of matter (the four elements), and in a separate work (the Posterior Analytics) he gave an account of scientific demonstration. He applied these ideas in his books on the generation of animals, on the nature of the heavens and earth, and on meteorology, where the latter included atmospheric phenomena such as rainbows and mock suns as well as terrestrial phenomena such as rivers, seas, mines and earthquakes.

Everything that Aristotle wrote was false - at least according to the French humanist Petrus Ramus. Certainly, there is much in Aristotle that scientists have since rejected. However Aristotle was no idiot, and he backed up his claims with a rich mixture of testimony, first-hand observation, abstract argument, thought experiments, and (sometimes) experiments. For this reason, and because his libri naturales were required reading for most students who attended Medieval universities, they are essential reading for today's students of past science.

The primary readings are extracts from Aristotle's works in which he argues (respectively) for the impossibility of a void, for a theory about the causes of earthquakes, and for a theory about the generation of animals. The secondary reading is a recent survey of Greek science that puts Aristotle in his intellectual context.

You should read the survey and one of the extracts. The seminar questions focus on the primary readings.

Seminar questions

Was Aristotle doing science? If not, what was he doing?

Essential readings

Geoffroy E. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece (Yale: New Haven, 2002) - chapter 4 (The Fundamental Issues of Greek Science)

Meteorology, book 2, chapters 7-8 - earthquakes

Physics, book 4, chapters 6-9 - the void ie. empty space

On the Generation of Animals, book 1, chapters 17-19 and chapters 21-22 - the generation of animals

All Aristotle extracts are from Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle: the Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton, 1991).

Further reading on Aristotle

Entry on Aristotle in the DSB - a good, though somewhat old-fashioned, overview of Aristotle's oeuvre

Barnes, Jonathan, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) -- see especially the two chapters by Hankinson

Bolton, Robert, ‘Definition and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Generation of Animals’, in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science (University of Chicago Press, 1992), chapter 3 - see also the equivalent chapter in the much-revised second edition of 2007

Lloyd, Geoffrey, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968)

Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘Empirical Research in Aristotle’s Biology’, in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

Shields, Christopher, Aristotle (Routledge, 2014), especially the chapter entitled 'Explaining Nature and the Nature of Explanation' - a clear, accessible introduction to Aristotle's views on causation and explanation