Journal of the History of Philosophy

Aristotle was deeply fascinated by animals on account of their self-motion—that is, animals move themselves from one place to another in response to their needs and desires rather than in mechanical or chemical reaction to things in their environment, as inanimate things and plants do. This ability requires sensory awareness of one's environment and sophisticated control of one's body. Moreover, Aristotle was intrigued by the sheer variety of ways animals move themselves and of the parts they employ to do so. Indeed, this variety was something Aristotle systematically observed and held in need of scientific explanation, which is precisely what he delivers in the short treatise, On Progression of Animals (De incessu animalium, henceforth IA).

To explain the variety of animal locomotion and their locomotory parts, Aristotle relied on three very general principles: first, nature does nothing in vain; second, there are six functionally determined spatial directions; and third, pushing and pulling are the most basic mechanical actions of locomotion. He also developed a relevant taxonomy (two-footed/four-footed/many-footed/footless) and devised a highly abstract notion of the bodily architecture of animals (single origin of motion in the middle of the body; a certain number of peripheral "points of motion"; bending as the fundamental operation of limbs). Aristotle's enterprise is likely to strike us as alien because it is entirely disconnected from Linnaean taxonomy and evolutionary theory, as well as from the essentials of biomechanics. However, we cannot fail to be impressed by his achievement in terms of generality, systematicity, and explanatory power—all this in the absence of anyone's shoulders to stand on.

Although IA provides an excellent glimpse into Aristotle's scientific methodology, from antiquity to the present day it has been one of his least studied works. This volume—the first book-length study of IA in any modern language—takes a first step toward correcting this unfortunate situation. It is, quite simply, the only companion to IA that we have, and it is likely to remain the best one for many years to come. This volume contains a critical edition of the Greek text, an accompanying English translation, and a commentary in the form of nine sections that discuss one or several chapters of Aristotle's text in their sequence. There is also some introductory material, a bibliography, a general index, and an index of the passages referred to.

The Greek text, prepared by Pantelis Golitsis, marks a significant improvement on Jaeger's 1913 text. Golitsis inspected the five most important manuscripts and helpfully distinguished three different hands in the oldest manuscript Z (Oxford, Corpus Christi, ms. 108). He also took into account three new witnesses, although, sadly, he left out the Latin tradition. He produced a Greek text that departs from Jaeger at some forty places and sensibly diverges from the traditional division of chapters 17 and 18. He equipped the text with a rich and positive critical apparatus. The translation—the joint work of the authors of the commentary, polished by Andrea Falcon—is for the most part accurate, reads smoothly, and is terminologically consistent, surpassing the two most widely used English translations: Farquharson's in the Revised Oxford Translation of Aristotle's works, and Forster's in the Loeb series. At least one inaccuracy should be noted, however: at 704b14, the Greek has τοῦτον, whereas the translation reads τὸν αὐτόν, following Leonicus's eodem modo (45). Falcon makes much of the reading "things occur in the same manner in all works of nature" in his chapter on IA 1–3 (109–12, emphasis added), without noting that it departs from the printed Greek text.

The introductory material has three parts. The first is Andrea Falcon's helpful general introduction to Aristotle's text. Falcon presents the agenda of IA, with eleven questions Aristotle sets out to answer and the main elements...