La filosofia della natura di Aristotele e la tradizione aristotelica

Aristotle’s natural philosophy is a novelty in the context of the ancient investigation of nature not only for its breadth and complexity but also (and above all) because it responds to a distinctive set of epistemological concerns. In this essay, I try to give an account of what is new, and indeed highly original, in the Aristotelian research program, as well as of its mixed fortunes in antiquity. What emerges is a project that is anomalous if considered in the context of ancient thought and is unfashionable when compared to what is nowadays considered scientific knowledge.