Current Research
1. Aristotle's Material Elements
I finished a draft of a monograph, tentatively titled Aristotle's Material Elements. More details are available on the Elements page.
Synopsis:
This book offers
a study of Aristotle’s material elements as they appear within his natural
philosophy, and particularly, in On
Generation and Corruption 2.1-4, Physics
8.4, and De Caelo 4. The book defends the view that Aristotle
possesses an account of simple bodies that remains consistent across these
texts; the apparent differences between his account of elemental motion and the
elemental transformations are methodological, not doctrinal. In defending this view, the book develops an
account of the powers of bodies, and shows that inanimate bodies possess powers
that explain their changes in the categories of quality, quantity, and
place. A consequence of the account is
that Aristotle’s simple bodies are substances of a special kind: they are
unable to change with respect to quality, quantity, or place without also
undergoing substantial change.
2. Current Projects:
3. Other Interests
I am generally interested in topics at the intersection of metaphysics and natural philosophy in Aristotle. I am particularly interested in what role, if any, matter and material kinds of explanation may have within Aristotle's mathematics and logic. I am also interested in the ontological status of inanimate materials that appear outside of biological contexts, and more recently, the relationship between biological and non-biological processes.
Recent Journal Articles (please e-mail if you need access to any of these):
Published in Conference Proceedings: "Corpses, Seeds, and Statues: The Relation Between Potentiality and Possibility in Aristotle's Metaphysics and De Interpretatione" Newsletters for the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy 7(1), 2006: 27-31. Recent Book Reviews: Review of Devin Henry, Aristotle on Form, Matter, and Moving Causes (Cambridge, 2020), in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Review of Christian Pfeiffer, Aristotle's Theory of Bodies (Oxford, 2019), in Ancient Philosophy 40(2), 2020, 512-515 (page proofs) Review of Christopher Byrne, Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion (Toronto, 2018), in Journal of the History of Philosophy 58(2), 399-400. (page proofs) Other projects, some ongoing for years now... Unearthing the metals in Aristotle's Meteorology Incomplete and indeterminate quantity in Aristotle Aristotle's geometrical objects Material explanation in Posterior Analytics 2 Philoponus on matter and extension in De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Proclum 11
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