482 BOOK REVIEWS element begins rotating around the center of the earth when the natural places are reached, as Xenarchus maintains. Falcon also seems to miss certain passages in Aristotle that would deepen his insights, such as when he speculates about why Aristotle never calls the motions ofthe planets and stars poreia, "progressive motion" (93-94), proposing that it is due to their "lack of flexibility" (94). Looking at the treatment of place in Physics (212a24-b23) and even some comments on the motion of the stars in De Caelo (289b31-290b10), we could add that the heavenly bodies are, properly speaking, not the planets and stars but the mutually contiguous transparent orbs that bear them, and that these orbs rotate in place, so naturally this rotation is neither progressive nor a motion like anything we see here below. Other shortcomings include a tendency for reiteration of the main theses of the book-for example, Falcon reminds the reader several times that Aristotle does not call the celestial matter "aether" and then devotes much of the epilogue to drilling the point home. Also, the classical commentators play a principal role in the exegesis ofAristotle; one sees here the typical modern academic silence about the medieval commentators. As a result one familiar with the work of, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas may find Falcon reinventing a few wheels. But these are small criticisms of a brief book that is packed full of matter for reflection and which is both a significant contribution to Aristotle scholarship and an important starting point for any attempt at rehabilitating Aristotelian natural philosophy. Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula, California CHRISTOPHER A. DECAEN God and the Evil ofScarcity: Moral Foundations ofEconomic Agency. By ALBINO BARRERA. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. 394. $46.00 (cloth), $22.00 (paper). ISBN 0-268-02192-9 (cloth), 0-26802193 -7 (paper). Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics. By ALBINO BARRERA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 248. $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-52185341 -9. True interdisciplinary work is more talked about than done in the academy. Rewards in the modern university still tend to go to those who are eminent in a specialized area. Indeed, sub-specializations have proliferated to the extent that within large departments of research universities members of the same department may have little to say to each other. Although interdisciplinary majors and minors are growing at the undergraduate level, the institutions of BOOK REVIEWS 483 higher education continue to be dominated by departmental organization. Hiring, tenure, and promotion still go through the departmental screening process in the vast percentage of cases. Thus, it is no surprise that young faculty learn that the reward system does not favor interdisciplinary research. There is an old quip made about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that all the theologians thought he was a marvelous scientist while all the scientists thought he was a terrific theologian. However unfair that was about Teilhard, it indicates the peril of crossing disciplinary boundaries. Those with whom you dialogue appreciate that someone is trying to build bridges, but no one claims you as one of their own. Philosophy has traditionally been the dialogue partner with theology. While that conversation continues, albeit somewhat one-sidedly as many in philosophy no longer read serious theology, there is an expanding need for additional partners in dialogue. In our time a conversation with the natural sciences is seen to be crucial to the vitality of theology. And we are regaining an appreciation for the import of the fine arts for theological reflection, as the beautiful returns to its rightful place alongside the true and the good as a theological category. The conversation with the social sciences, however, has not progressed as far as one might have anticipated; and nowhere is this more true than in theology's interaction with economics. Given the centrality of economic discourse in our society and the broad claims that economists are making for their discipline-as explanatory of just about any phenomenon involving choice, tradeoffs, or preferences-it is curious that so few theologians are economically literate. I state the above by way of explaining my appreciation for Albino Barrera's academic...