Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation offers many puzzles to those who wish to understand his theory both within the context of his biology and within the context of his more general philosophy of nature. In this paper, I approach the difficult and vague elements of Aristotle’s account of spontaneous generation not as weaknesses, but as opportunities for an interesting glimpse into the thought of an early scientist struggling to reconcile evidence and theory. The paper has two goals: to give as (...) charitable and full an account as possible of what Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation was, and to examine some of its consequences; and to reflect on Aristotle as a scientist, and what his comments reveal about how he approached a difficult problem. In particular, I propose that the well-recognized problem of the incompatibility between Aristotle’s concept of spontaneity and his theory of spontaneous generation presents an opportunity for insight into his scientific methodology when approaching ill-understood phenomena. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr has argued that Darwinian theory discredited essentialist modes of thought and replaced them with what he has called "population thinking". In this paper, I characterize essentialism as embodying a certain conception of how variation in nature is to be explained, and show how this conception was undermined by evolutionary theory. The Darwinian doctrine of evolutionary gradualism makes it impossible to say exactly where one species ends and another begins; such line-drawing problems are often taken to be the decisive (...) reason for thinking that essentialism is untenable. However, according to the view of essentialism I suggest, this familiar objection is not fatal to essentialism. It is rather the essentialist's use of what I call the natural state model for explaining variation which clashes with evolutionary theory. This model implemented the essentialist's requirement that properties of populations be defined in terms of properties of member organisms. Requiring such constituent definitions is reductionistic in spirit; additionally, evolutionary theory shows that such definitions are not available, and, moreover, that they are not needed to legitimize population-level concepts. Population thinking involves the thesis that population concepts may be legitimized by showing their connections with each other, even when they are not reducible to concepts applying at lower levels of organization. In the paper, I develop these points by describing Aristotle's ideas on the origins of biological variation; they are a classic formulation of the natural state model. I also describe how the development of statistical ideas in the 19th century involved an abandoning of the natural state model. (shrink)

Teleology has a complicated history in the biological sciences. Some have argued that Darwin’s theory has allowed biology to purge itself of teleological explanations. Others have been content to retain teleology and to treat it as metaphorical, or have sought to replace it with less problematic notions like teleonomy. And still others have tried to naturalize it in a way that distances it from the vitalism of the nineteenth century, focusing on the role that function plays in teleological explanation. No (...) consensus has seemed possible in this debate. This paper takes a different approach. It argues that teleology is a perfectly acceptable scientific notion, but that the debate took an unfortunate misstep some 2300 years ago, one that has confused things ever since. The misstep comes in the beginning of Aristotle’s Physics when a distinction is made between two types of teleological explanation. One type pertains to artifacts while the other pertains to entities in nature. For Aristotle, artifacts are guided by something external to themselves, human intentions, while natural entities are guided by an internal nature. We aim to show that there is, in fact, only one type of legitimate teleological explanation, what Aristotle would have considered a variant of an artifact model, where entities are guided by external fields. We begin with an analysis of the differences between the two types of explanation. We then examine some evidence in Aristotle’s biological works suggesting that on account of his natural-artifactual distinction, he encountered difficulties in trying to provide teleological accounts of spontaneous generation. And we show that it is possible to resolve these difficulties with a more robust version of an artifact model of teleology, in other words, with an externalist teleology. This is McShea’s model, in which goal-directed entities are guided by a nested series of upper-level fields. To explain teleological behavior, this account invokes only external physical forces rather than mysterious internal natures. We then consider how field theory differs from other efforts to naturalize teleology in biology. And finally, we show how the account enables us to grapple with certain difficult cases – genes and intentions – where, even in biology today, the temptation to posit internal natures remains strong. (shrink)

This paper reexamines Theophrastus’ Metaphysics 11a18–26, an obscure testimony about Speusippus, the second head of the Platonic Academy. As opposed to the traditional interpretation, which takes this passage as Theophrastus’ polemic against Speusippus’ doctrine of value, I argue that he here dialectically takes advantage of, rather than launches an attack on, the Platonist. Based on this new reading, I further propose a revision and a reassessment of the ‘gloomy metaphysics’ of Speusippus which will shed new light on his ethics.

Aristotle held that perception consists in the reception of external sensory qualities (or sensible forms) in the sensorium. This idea is repeated in many forms in contemporary philosophy, including, with regard to vision, in the idea (still not firmly rejected) that the retinal image consists of points of colour. In fact, this is false. Colour is a quality that is constructed by the visual system, and though it is possible to be a realist about colour, it is completely misleading to (...) think of it as received by the retina. Moreover, such supposedly “charitable” interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrines, based on miscon- ceptions of perception-science, distort our understanding of his historical context. (shrink)

Books M and N of Aristotle's Metaphysics receive relatively little careful attention. Even scholars who give detailed analyses of the arguments in M-N dismiss many of them as hopelessly flawed and biased, and find Aristotle's critique to be riddled with mistakes and question-begging. This assessment of the quality of Aristotle's critique of his predecessors (and of the Platonists in particular), is widespread. The series of arguments in M 2 (1077a14-b11) that targets separate mathematical objects is the subject of particularly strong (...) criticism by Annas and Ross. Two related arguments in this series (1077a14-20 and 1077a24-31) will serve as cases in point. The principal charges made against these arguments (that Aristotle misunderstands or misrepresents his opponents' views, and that he engages in question-begging because he presupposes his own metaphysical views) are frequently made against Aristotle's critique of Platonist positions more generally. If, as I argue, these charges are false for our two test case arguments, then there is good reason to think that they might also be false when they are leveled against the other arguments in this M 2 series. And, although presenting an argument for this is beyond the scope of this paper, this suggests that these two charges are more often than not false when applied to Aristotle's critique of Platonist mathematical views in M-N and beyond. (shrink)

Teratogenesis poses a real problem for all those who wish to see the natural world as a success story, and this includes the Neoplatonists. On their view even ordinary biological reproduction is governed by principles ultimately derived from intelligible Forms. Thus, the generation of terata would seem to call into question the very efficacy of these intelligible principles in the sensible world, since these would seem to be cases in which matter has gotten the upper hand over the intelligible. Although (...) the corpus of surviving Neoplatonic works offers no systematic discussion of the problems surrounding teratology, it is possible to find a number of passages which deal with the explanation of terata. In this article these passages are collected and discussed. It is argued inter alia that, far from capitulating in the face of this putative evidence against the full efficacy of intelligible causes in the world, the Neoplatonists managed to use these phenomena to the advantage of their own views. (shrink)

Más allá de las críticas de Aristóteles a la noción platónica de participación, existen algunos usos de este término que merecen ser atendidos en la obra aristotélica, en tanto suponen no solo una herencia platónica sino también una resignificación en un plexo conceptual diverso. Este trabajo explora el uso aristotélico de la noción de participación como finalidad no intencional en el argumento que sostiene que uno de los modos de alcanzar la inmortalidad es la procreación, para mostrar cómo se puede (...) compatibilizar la adopción de la terminología platónica de la participación con el entramado causal aristotélico. (shrink)

Beginning the nineteenth-century and continuing down to the present, many authors writing on the history of geology and paleontology have attributed the theory that fossils were inorganic formations produced within the earth, rather than by the deposition of living organisms, to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Some have even gone so far as to claim this was the consensus view in the classical period up through the Middle Ages. In fact, such a notion was entirely foreign to ancient and medieval (...) thought and only appeared within the manifold of ‘Renaissance episteme,’ the characteristics of which have often been projected backwards by some historians onto earlier periods. This paper endeavors to correct this error, explain the development of the Renaissance view, describe certain ancient precedents thereof, and trace the history of the misinterpretation in the literature. -/- . (shrink)

With regard to Aristotle’s discussion of chance and fortune in Phys. II.5–6, interpreters maintain that, after having provided a specific definition of fortune, applicable to intentional chance processes, in ch. 5, Aristotle is, in ch. 6, seeking to identify a specific meaning of αὐτόματον, which exclusively applies to strictly natural chance processes. When understood in such terms, however, ch. 6 turns out to be problematic, insofar as the examples Aristotle uses to illustrate αὐτόματον refer to mixed natural and intentional chance (...) processes. To show that ch. 6 is internally consistent, I will argue that Aristotle’s goal simply is to emphasise the generic quality of the notion of αὐτόματον compared to that of τύχη and that the examples are chiefly geared towards this aim. I will also explain why such a treatment of chance is relevant within his critical analysis of Empedocles’ and Democritus’ theories of τύχη and αὐτόματον. (shrink)

The Middle Included is a systematic exploration of the meanings of logos throughout Aristotle’s work. It claims that the basic meaning is “gathering,” a relation that holds its terms together without isolating them or collapsing one to the other. This meaning also applies to logos in the sense of human language. Aristotle describes how some animals are capable of understanding non-firsthand experience without being able to relay it, while others relay it without understanding. Aygün argues that what distinguishes human language, (...) for Aristotle, is its ability to both understand and relay firsthand and non-firsthand experiences. This ability is key to understanding the human condition: science, history, news media, propaganda, gossip, utopian fiction, and sophistry, as well as philosophy. Ömer Aygün finds Aristotle’s name for this peculiar but crucial human ability of “gathering” both experiences is logos, and this leads to a claim about the specificity of human rationality and language. (shrink)