Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology
Allan Gotthelf
Reviews and Awards
"The community of Aristotle scholars owes its gratitude to Gotthelf and looks forward to the paths he has yet to take in the exploration of Aristotle's biological writings." --Reason Papers: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies
"Over the past several decades Allan Gotthelf has established himself as one of the leading experts on Aristotle's philosophy of biology. This book is a collection of his most important papers on the subject. Readers already familiar with Gotthelf's work will not find many surprises in it. Gotthelf, however, does an excellent job of revising the papers and identifying connections between them so that they form a more unified body of work. And for those who are new to Aristotle's biology this book is an exceptional resource. It contains a wealth of interesting and provocative ideas on everything from the nature of teleological causation, to the relation between Aristotle's scientific theory and practice, to an analysis of the concepts of form, essence and substance, to a discussion of Darwin's views on Aristotle as a biologist."--Devin Henry, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"For scholars approaching Aristotle's biological treatises for the first time, the value of this book is found in the comprehensive way of understanding Aristotle's work that emerges from the collection of Gotthelf's best contributions. For scholars already familiar with Gotthelf's work, the value comes in the chapters published for the first time and from the fact that this work collects together the various parts of Gotthelf's interpretation in the way Gotthelf himself thinks these parts fit together. That the book includes an impressive list of references and indexes (locorum, names, and subjects) further increases its value as a reference for those engaging with Aristotle's biological treatises." -- Mind
