Book Review: Insights into de Caelo: New Perspectives on Aristotle's De caelo

Abstract

INSIGHTS INTO DE CAELO New Perspectives on Aristotle's De caelo. Edited by Alan C. Bowen and Christian Wildberg. (Philosophia Antiqua, cxvii; Brill, Leiden, 2009). Pp. vi + 320. euro103. ISBN 978-90-04-17376-7.Familiarity with the main doctrines of the De caelo is a prerequisite for an understanding of much of the thought and culture of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as Alan C. Bowen and Christian Wildberg state in the Preface to their edited volume of essays on Aristotle's work. Some readers of this journal may be attracted to this volume because of the influence of De cae Io on cosmological thought through to the time of Galileo and Kepler, for, as Bowen and Wildberg note, the work helped to shape the way in which Western civilization imagined its natural environment and place at the center of the others will be interested in considering particular issues in De caelo.The contributors to the volume are highly regarded specialists in ancient Greek philosophy; their papers aim to offer philosophically sound readings of difficult passages or topics in De caelo, with the goal of deepening our understanding of Aristotle's cosmology. As the editors explain in their Introduction, the Greek title Peri ouranou and the Latin De caelo indicate that the subject of the work is the entire universe; the English title On the heavens may suggest that the sublunary region is excluded. However, the work is concerned not only with the nature and movement of the sphere of the fixed stars and with planetary movements as well as other phenomena in the region between the sphere of the fixed stars and the Moon, but also considers the universe as a whole (including the Earth) and the natural motion of all the elementary bodies therein. The contributions here reflect the breadth of Aristotle's enquiry; several authors focus on issues relating to scientific method. In some instances the work of one contributor relates closely to and reinforces the arguments of another; in others, contributors disagree about particular questions.A list of the chapter titles gives a good indication of the contents. In the first essay, From Plato's Timaeus to Aristotle's De caelo: The case of the missing world soul, Thomas K. Johansen considers the title of Aristotle's work, noting that Aristotle himself discussed the different meanings oiouranos (heaven; at 278b9-21). Comparing topics treated in the Timaeus and the De caelo, Johansen argues that there is no world soul in De caelo, nor is there an explicit cosmic teleology, such as that found in the Timaeus. While the astronomy of the Timaeus provides a divine template for living ethically, in the De caelo Aristotle is not concerned with ethics. Several other contributors consider Aristotle's work in relation to that of Plato, including Sarah Broadie, who (in 'The possibilities of being and not-being in De caelo 1. …