An Approach to Aristotle's Physics

Maintaining that Aristotle's writings about the natural world contain a rhetorical surface as well as a philosophic core, David Bolotin argues in this book that Aristotle never seriously intended many of his doctrines that have been demolished by modern science. To that end, he presents a number of "case studies" to show that Aristotle deliberately misrepresented his views about nature -- a thought that was commonly shared by commentators on his work in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Bolotin demonstrates that Aristotle's real views have not been refuted by modern science and still deserve our most serious attention.

"This remarkable work addresses with an open mind the question of the validity of Aristotle's natural science, in full awareness of the very great obstacles which stand in the way of an informed acceptance of its validity, obstacles stemming both from modem natural science and from the complexities and obscurities of the Aristotelian text itself.