Abstract

Aristotle offers us a rich and comprehensive study of the living, but innumerable impediments stand in the way of retrieving his insights. Three fundamental matters can be stumbling blocks for us, namely the starting points or first relevant data of the science, the mode of procedure the science and the end or completion of the science. Since the starting points, mode and ends distinguish the sciences, this thesis will explicate Aristotle's teaching these aspects in the study of living things. ;Concerning the first impediment, an account must be given of how Aristotle defines the words 'life' and 'soul', and how these definitions are supported empirically. Concerning the second, Aristotle's treatment seems burdened with logical issues and dialectical treatments of predecessors; further, his procedure of demonstration by final causes is not only strange by modern standards, but even in light of his own statements on science. Concerning the third, Aristotle writes tersely and in no single place on the order and direction of the life sciences; whether that completion is classifying animal species, or something else, is unclear. ;The most fundamental impediment for the modern interpreter of Aristotle, from which the others flow, is his understanding of what can be proved from experience in the life-sciences. Aristotle maintains that substantial change, soul, and purpose in nature are all part of our experience, and one cannot help but think that many modern readers of Aristotle have fallen into grave anachronisms by reading this word in a Humean sense. ;By using the phrase "impediments," I have stated these issues in light of our difficulty understanding them, because we are tempted to dismiss or misinterpret doctrines in Aristotle's natural sciences that contradict our own. Since anachronistic interpretations more than anything alert us that impediments stand between the modern reader and Aristotle's study of living things, I highlight interpretive anachronisms as a way of showing differences between Aristotelian and the modern life sciences in vocabulary and intent