Fleet Barrie. Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 2

Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. — 225 p. — (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle).Book 2 of the Physics is arguably the best introduction to Aristotle. It contains ideas that are central to his thought, but also of continuing philosophical importance today. In Chapter One, he defines nature, because his subject is natural science, and distinguishes natural objects from artefacts. In Chapter Two, he distinguishes the subject matter of the natural scientist from that of the mathematician, although he relates the two. In Chapter Three, he introduces his seminal distinction of the four causes, or four modes of explanation. In Chapters Four, Five and Six, he explains what both luck and chance are: various kinds of coincidences. He does not yet make the anti-determinist decision, which I believe he later makes in Metaph. 6.3, that coincidences lack a cause, since they lack an explanation. After resuming in Chapter Seven the theory of four causes, he argues in Chapter Eight that there is purpose in nature, even in the absence of consciousness. A rival theory of purposeless natural selection can safely be rejected because it lacks the refinements of the modern theories of natural selection. In Chapter Nine, Aristotle shows how matter or the material cause explains: not as materialists think as a necessitating cause, but as a prerequisite presupposed for the attainment of natural purposes.