Andrea Falcon's webpage

here

Hrm, snazzy website. Haven't read her books...

From an abstract:

COLLOQUIA & CONFERENCES ARISTOTLE AND THE SCIENCE OF NATURE

Andrea Falcon
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Tech

February 3, 2005
Thursday, 4:00pm-6:00pm
BA (Close/Hipp) 008

In the opening lines of the Meteorology Aristotle outlines a program for the investigation of the natural world. I will focus on this program and show that Aristotle's science of nature is structured in a certain way and this structure is crucially dependent upon a particular conception of the natural world. Aristotle conceives of the natural world as a causal system in which the only direction of explanation is from the celestial to the sublunary world. A full appreciation of this conception will help the reader to understand the precise sense in which Aristotle's science of nature is a distinctly organized science. I will also argue that the opening lines of the Meteorology presuppose a strong grasp of the boundaries of the science of nature. Tellingly, the study of the soul is not mentioned in the opening lines of the Meteorology. Elsewhere Aristotle makes it abundantly clear that the study of the soul is preliminary to the study of life, but it is not a part of the science of nature. I will focus on the problematic relation between science of nature and study of the soul and the unique status of the De anima in the Aristotelian corpus.

The study of the soul is not a part of the science of nature? I don't know if Aristotle makes this claim. What did I read recently that was making this point? Oh never mind, I think it was Fr. Brock's paper for the Thomistic Institute. He was arguing that the soul is studied both in natural philosophy and in the metaphysics, and he was citing certain texts within Aristotle's De Anima. I'll have to reread the third book.

As for the celestial world having an influence on the soul--perhaps Aristotle does not include the soul as being under the influence of the celestial world because he believes it to be spiritual (and hence free, etc.).

I'll have to see if BC has this book and see what texts she cites to make her claims.

It turns out she wrote the SEP entry on causality. (The housemate reminded me that the aitia are enumerated by Plato; he must have been talking about the Phaedo.)

From the entry:

Aristotle was not the first person to engage in a causal investigation of the world around us. From the very beginning, and independently of Aristotle, the investigation of the natural world consisted in the search for the relevant causes of a variety of natural phenomena. From the Phaedo, for example, we learn that the so-called “inquiry into nature” consisted in a search for “the causes of each thing; why each thing comes into existence, why it goes out of existence, why it exists” (96 a 6-10). In this tradition of investigation, the search for causes was a search for answers to the question “why?”. Both in the Physics and in the Metaphysics Aristotle places himself in direct continuity with this tradition.