Philoponus - Böcker

Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics" elaborates for the first time in the history of Western philosophy the notions of science and the requirements for the distinctive kind of knowledge scientists possess. His model is mathematics and his treatment of science amounts to a philosophical discussion, from the perspective of Aristotelian syllogistic, of mathematical proofs and the principles they are based on. Chapters 1-8 expound the foundations of Aristotle's theory, pointing out the similarities and differences between scientific knowledge and other types of knowledge, establishing the need for basic principles, and identifying the types of principles and the source of necessity associated with scientific facts. Philoponus' massive commentary, the most complete ancient discussion of "Posterior Analytics Book 1", offers uniquely valuable testimony to the way this book was read and understood in late antiquity, as well as providing information on earlier interpretations. Of particular interest is Philoponus' account of scientific principles, which is based not only on Aristotle but also on the Greek mathematical tradition, especially Euclid and his commentator Proclus.

Of Philoponus' commentary on the Meteorology only that on chapters 1-9 and 12 of the first book has been preserved. It is translated in this series in two volumes, the first covering chapters 1-3; the second (this volume) chapters 4-9 and 12. The subjects discussed here include the nature of fiery and light phenomena in the sky, the formation of comets, the Milky Way, the properties of moist exhalation, and the formation of hail. Philoponus pays special attention to the distinction between the apparent and the real among the sky phenomena; he criticises Aristotle's theory of the Milky Way as sublunary, and argues for its origin in the heavenly realm; gives a detailed exposition of Aristotelian theory of antiperistasis, mutual replacement of the hot and the cold, as the mechanism of condensation and related processes. As in the first volume, Philoponus demonstrates scholarly erudition and familiarity with methods and results of post-Aristotelian Greek science. Despite the fragmented state of the work and the genre of commentary, the reader will find the elements of a coherent picture of the cosmos based on a radical re-thinking of Aristotelian meteorology and physics.

Aristotle's Meteorology influenced generations of speculation about the earth sciences, ranging from atmospheric phenomena to earthquakes. The commentary of John Philoponus (6th century AD) on the opening three chapters of Meteorology is here translated for the first time into English by Dr Inna Kupreeva, building on the work of L.G. Westerink. Philoponus, who today is increasingly respected as a philosopher in his own right, here engages critically with Aristotle's views about the building-blocks of our world, its size and relationship to other heavenly bodies, and reception of warmth from the sun. The translation in this volume is accompanied by a detailed introduction, extensive commentary notes and a bibliography.

In the chapters discussed in this section of "Philoponus' Physics commentary" Aristotle explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic tradition. Philoponus has his own, occasionally idiosyncratic, views on a number of important issues, and he sometimes disagrees with other teachers whose views he has encountered perhaps in written texts, and sometimes in oral delivery. A number of distinctive passages of philosophical importance occur in this part of Book 1, in which we see Philoponus at work on issues in physics and cosmology, as well as logic and metaphysics.

The "Posterior Analytics" contains Aristotle's Philosophy of Science. In Book 2, Aristotle asks how the scientist discovers what sort of loss of light constitutes lunar eclipse. The scientist has to discover that the moon's darkening is due to the earth's shadow. Once that defining explanation is known the scientist possesses the full scientific concept of lunar eclipse and can use it to explain other necessary features of the phenomenon. The present commentary, arguably misascribed to Philoponus, offers some interpretations of Aristotle that are unfamiliar nowadays. For example, the scientific concept of a human is acquired from observing particular humans and repeatedly receiving impressions in the sense image or percept and later in the imagination. The impressions received are not only of particular distinctive characteristics, like paleness, but also of universal human characteristics, like rationality. Perception can thus in a sense apprehend universal qualities in the individual as well as particular ones.

In one of the most original books of late antiquity, "Philoponus" argues for the Christian view that matter can be created by God out of nothing. It needs no prior matter for its creation. At the same time, "Philoponus" transforms Aristotle's conception of prime matter as an incorporeal 'something - I know not what' that serves as the ultimate subject for receiving extension and qualities. On the contrary, says "Philoponus", the ultimate subject is extension. It is three-dimensional extension with its exact dimensions and any qualities unspecified. Moreover, such extension is the defining characteristic of body. Hence, so far from being incorporeal, it is body, and as well as being prime matter, it is form - the form that constitutes body. This uses, but entirely disrupts, Aristotle's conceptual apparatus. Finally, in Aristotle's scheme of categories, this extension is not to be classified under the second category of quantity, but under the first category of substance as a substantial quantity.

Philoponus' commentary on the last part of Aristotle's Physics Book 4 does not offer major alternatives to Aristotle's science, as did his commentary on the earlier parts, concerning place, vacuum and motion in a vacuum. Aristotle's subject here is time, and his treatment of it had led to controversy in earlier writers. Philoponus does offer novelties when he treats motion round a bend as in one sense faster than motion on the straight over the same distance in the same time, because of the need to consider the greater effort involved. And he points out that in an earlier commentary on Book 8 he had argued against Aristotle for the possibility of a last instant of time.This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

In this part of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle elaborates his assessment of how universal truths of science can be scientifically explained as inevitable in demonstrative proofs. But he introduces complications: some sciences discuss phenomena that can only be explained by higher sciences and again sometimes we reason out a cause from an effect, rather than an effect from a cause. Philoponus takes these issues further. Reasoning from particular to universal is the direction taken by induction, and in mathematics reasoning from a theorem to the higher principles from which it follows is considered particularly valuable. It corresponds to the direction of analysis, as opposed to synthesis.This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

This is a post-Aristotelian Greek philosophical text, written at a crucial moment in the defeat of paganism by Christianity, AD 529, when the Emperor Justinian closed the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. Philoponus in Alexandria was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatanism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the most devout of the earlier Athenian pagan philosophers, Proclus, defending the distinctively Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' eighteen arguments to the contrary, which are discussed in eighteen chapters. Chapters 1-5 are translated in this volume.

In chapters 12-18 of Against Proclus, Philoponus continues to do battle against Proclus' arguments for the beginninglessness and everlastingness of the ordered universe. In this final section there are three notable issues under discussion. The first concerns the composition of the heavens and its manner of movement. Philoponus argues against the Aristotelian thesis that there is a fifth heavenly body that has a natural circular motion. He concludes that even though the celestial region is composed of fire and the other three elements, it can move in a circle by the agency of its soul, and that this circular motion is not compromised in any way by the innate natural motion of the fire.Chapter 16 contains an extended discussion of the will of God and His relation to particulars. Here Philoponus addresses issues that become central to medieval philosophical and theological discussions, including the unity, timelessness and indivisibility of God's will. Finally, throughout these seven chapters Philoponus is engaged in a detailed exegesis of Plato's Timaeus which aims to settle a number of familiar interpretive problems, notably how we should understand the pre-cosmic state of disorderly motion, and the statement that the visible cosmos is an image of the paradigm. Philoponus' exegetical concerns culminate in chapter 18 with an extensive discussion of Plato's attitude to poetry and myth.

This is one of the most interesting of all post-Aristotelian Greek philosophical texts, written at a crucial moment in the defeat of paganism by Christianity, AD 529, when the Emperor Justinian closed the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. Philoponus in Alexandria was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatonism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the most devout of the earlier Athenian pagan philosophers, Proclus, defending the distinctively Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' eighteen arguments to the contrary, which are discussed in eighteen chapters. Chapters 6-8 are translated in this volume.

In On The Soul 2.1-6, Aristotle differs from Plato in his account of the soul, by tying it to the body. The soul is the life-manifesting capacities that we all have and that distinguish living things, and explain their behaviour. He defines soul and life by reference to the capacities for using food to maintain structure and reproduce, for perceiving and desiring, and for rational thought. Capacities have to be defined by reference to the objects to which they are directed. The five senses, for example, are defined by reference to their objects which are primarily forms like colour. And in perception we are said to receive these forms without matter. Philoponus understands this reception not physiologically as the eye jelly's taking on colour patches, but 'cognitively', like Brentano, who much later thought that Aristotle was treating the forms as intentional objects. Philoponus is the patron of non-physiological interpretations, which are still a matter of controversy today.

Until the launch of this series over ten years ago, the 15,000 volumes of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constituted the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or other European languages. Subjects covered in this, the third and last, volume of translation of this work include: why the elements are four in number; what's wrong with Empedocles' theory of elements; how homogeneous stuffs, particularly the tissues of a living body, come to be and consist of the elements. The volume also contains very important discussions of causes, particularly of efficient cause, and of necessity in the sphere of generation and corruption. It is of interest to students of ancient philosophy and science (the commentary draws on earlier philosophical and medical texts); of Patristics and Christian Theology (it allows comparison of Philoponus' later creationist doctrine with his earlier ideas about generation); of medieval philosophy (this text was known to the Arabs; it is used by Avicenna and Averroes); and to anyone with interest in the metaphysics of causation, emergence, necessity and determinism.

In this, one of the most original ancient texts on sense perception, Philoponus, the sixth century AD commentator on Aristotle, considers how far perceptual processes are incorporeal. Colour affects us in the same way as light which, passing through a stained glass window, affects the air, but colours only the masonry beyond. Sounds and smells are somewhat more physical, travelling most of the way to us with a moving block of air, but not quite all the way. Only the organ of touch takes on the tangible qualities perceived, because reception of sensible qualities in perception is cognitive, not physical. Neither light nor the action of colour involves the travel of bodies. Our capacities for psychological activity do not follow, nor result from, the chemistry of our bodies, but merely supervene on that. On the other hand, Philoponus shows knowledge of the sensory nerves, and he believes that thought and anger both warm us. This argument is used elsewhere to show how we can tell someone else's state of mind.

This text by Philoponus, the sixth-century commentator on Aristotle, is notable for its informative introduction to psychology, which tells us the views of Philoponus, of his teacher and of later Neoplatonists on our psychological capacities and on mind-body relations. There is an unusual account of how reason can infer a universally valid conclusion from a single instance, and there are inherited views on the roles of intellect and perception in concept formation, and on the human ability to make reasoned decisions, celebrated by Aristotle, but here downgraded. Philoponus attacks Galen's view that psychological capacities follow, or result from, bodily chemistry; they merely supervene on that and can be counteracted. He has benefited from Galen's knowledge of the brain and nerves, but also propounds the Neoplatonist belief in tenuous bodies which after death support our irrational souls temporarily, or our reason eternally.

Until the launch of this series over fifteen years ago, the 15,000 volumes of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constituted the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or other European languages. This text by Philoponus rejects accounts of soul, or as we would say of mind, which define it as moving, as cognitive, or in physical terms. Chapter 3 considers Aristotle's attack on the idea that the soul is in motion. This was an attack partly on his teacher, Plato, since Plato defines the soul as self-moving. Philoponus agrees with Aristotle's attack on the idea that a thing must be in motion in order to cause motion. But he offers what may be Ammonius' interpretation of Plato's apparently physicalistic account of the soul in the Timaeus as symbolic. What we would call the mind-body relation is the subject of Chapter 4. Plato and Aristotle attacked a physicalistic theory of soul, which suggested it was the blend, ratio, or harmonious proportion of ingredients in the body.Philoponus attacked the theory too, but we learn from him that Epicurus had defended it. In Chapter 5, Philoponus endorses Aristotle's rejection of the idea that the soul is particles and of Empedocles' idea that the soul must be made of all four elements in order to know what is made of the same elements. He also rejects, with Aristotle, definitions of the soul as moving or cognitive as ignoring lower forms of life. He finally discusses Aristotle's rejection of Plato's localisation of parts of the soul in parts of the body, but asks if new knowledge of the brain and the nerves do not require some kind of localisation.

Aristotle's Physics 1.4-9 explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic tradition. Philoponus has his own, occasionally idiosyncratic, views on a number of important issues, and he sometimes disagrees with other teachers whose views he has encountered perhaps in written texts and in oral delivery. A number of distinctive passages of philosophical importance occur in this part of Book 1, in which we see Philoponus at work on issues in physics and cosmology, as well as logic and metaphysics. This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, commentary notes and a bibliography.

The Posterior Analytics contains Aristotle's philosophy of science. In Book 2, Aristotle asks how the scientist discovers what sort of loss of light constitutes lunar eclipse. The scientist has to discover that the moon's darkening is due to the earth's shadow. Once that defining explanation is known the scientist possesses the full scientific concept of lunar eclipse and can use it to explain other necessary features of the phenomenon. The present commentary, arguably ascribed to Philoponus incorrectly, offers some interpretations of Aristotle that are unfamiliar nowadays. For example, the scientific concept of a human is acquired from observing particular humans and repeatedly receiving impressions in the sense image or percept and later in the imagination. The impressions received are not only of particular distinctive characteristics, like paleness, but also of universal human characteristics, like rationality. Perception can thus in a sense apprehend universal qualities in the individual as well as particular ones. This volume contains an English translation of the commentary, accompanied by extensive commentary notes, an introduction and a bibliography.

In one of the most original books of late antiquity, Philoponus argues for the Christian view that matter can be created by God out of nothing. It needs no prior matter for its creation. At the same time, Philoponus transforms Aristotle's conception of prime matter as an incorporeal 'something - I know not what' that serves as the ultimate subject for receiving extension and qualities. On the contrary, says Philoponus, the ultimate subject is extension. It is three-dimensional extension with its exact dimensions and any qualities unspecified. Moreover, such extension is the defining characteristic of body. Hence, so far from being incorporeal, it is body, and as well as being prime matter, it is form - the form that constitutes body. This uses, but entirely disrupts, Aristotle's conceptual apparatus. Finally, in Aristotle's scheme of categories, this extension is not to be classified under the second category of quantity, but under the first category of substance as a substantial quantity. This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, detailed notes and introduction, and a bibliography.

Philoponus' commentary on the last part of Aristotle's Physics Book 4 does not offer major alternatives to Aristotle's science, as did his commentary on the earlier parts, concerning place, vacuum and motion in a vacuum. Aristotle's subject here is time, and his treatment of it had led to controversy in earlier writers. Philoponus does offer novelties when he treats motion round a bend as in one sense faster than motion on the straight over the same distance in the same time, because of the need to consider the greater effort involved. And he points out that in an earlier commentary on Book 8 he had argued against Aristotle for the possibility of a last instant of time.This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

In this part of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle elaborates his assessment of how universal truths of science can be scientifically explained as inevitable in demonstrative proofs. But he introduces complications: some sciences discuss phenomena that can only be explained by higher sciences and again sometimes we reason out a cause from an effect, rather than an effect from a cause. Philoponus takes these issues further. Reasoning from particular to universal is the direction taken by induction, and in mathematics reasoning from a theorem to the higher principles from which it follows is considered particularly valuable. It corresponds to the direction of analysis, as opposed to synthesis.This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

Aristotle's Posterior Analytics elaborates for the first time in the history of Western philosophy the notions of science and the requirements for the distinctive kind of knowledge scientists possess. His model is mathematics and his treatment of science amounts to a philosophical discussion, from the perspective of Aristotelian syllogistic, of mathematical proofs and the principles they are based on. Chapters 1-8 expound the foundations of Aristotle's theory, pointing out the similarities and differences between scientific knowledge and other types of knowledge, establishing the need for basic principles, and identifying the types of principles and the source of necessity associated with scientific facts. Philoponus' massive commentary, the most complete ancient discussion of Posterior Analytics Book 1, offers uniquely valuable testimony to the way this book was read and understood in late antiquity, as well as providing information on earlier interpretations. Of particular interest is Philoponus' account of scientific principles, which is based not only on Aristotle but also on the Greek mathematical tradition, especially Euclid and his commentator Proclus.

Of Philoponus' commentary on the Meteorology only that on chapters 1-9 and 12 of the first book has been preserved. It is translated in this series in two volumes, the first covering chapters 1-3; the second (this volume) chapters 4-9 and 12. The subjects discussed here include the nature of fiery and light phenomena in the sky, the formation of comets, the Milky Way, the properties of moist exhalation, and the formation of hail. Philoponus pays special attention to the distinction between the apparent and the real among the sky phenomena; he criticises Aristotle's theory of the Milky Way as sublunary, and argues for its origin in the heavenly realm; gives a detailed exposition of Aristotelian theory of antiperistasis, mutual replacement of the hot and the cold, as the mechanism of condensation and related processes. As in the first volume, Philoponus demonstrates scholarly erudition and familiarity with methods and results of post-Aristotelian Greek science. Despite the fragmented state of the work and the genre of commentary, the reader will find the elements of a coherent picture of the cosmos based on a radical re-thinking of Aristotelian meteorology and physics.

Aristotle's Meteorology influenced generations of speculation about the earth sciences, ranging from atmospheric phenomena to earthquakes. The commentary of John Philoponus (6th century AD) on the opening three chapters of Meteorology is here translated for the first time into English by Dr Inna Kupreeva, building on the work of L.G. Westerink. Philoponus, who today is increasingly respected as a philosopher in his own right, here engages critically with Aristotle's views about the building-blocks of our world, its size and relationship to other heavenly bodies, and reception of warmth from the sun. The translation in this volume is accompanied by a detailed introduction, extensive commentary notes and a bibliography.