On the Parts of Animals (review)

Aristotle's once neglected De partibus animalium (PA), so long a specialty reserved for those with peculiarly Aristotelian tastes, begins with a simple yet pregnant distinction: that between the expert with understanding of a particular matter and the generalist able to judge the correctness of others' explanations without knowledge of the particulars. An enticing start; but few professed to understand its pertinence to the treatise in general comparative anatomy which follows (PA 2–4). Thus, whereas the generalist's discussion of "method" in book 1 was deemed worthy of closer scholarly and philosophical attention, the apparently unrelated, "specialist's" books to follow were often considered to be, well, something for the specialist.

In fact, it indeed required specialization in the field of Aristotelian natural science to recognize the generalist at work in PA as a whole and to establish the philosophical interest of his work. These were the merits of David Balme's translation and commentary of PA 1 in the Clarendon series some thirty years ago.¹ Lennox's new translation and commentary of the entire PA for this same series, which will complement (though probably not fully supplant) that earlier publication, marks a further major development in the study of Aristotle's philosophy of living things, and furthermore, presents the case for an acceptance of the real philosophical interest of PA as a whole.

Besides providing a clear and reliable translation, Lennox offers a thorough commentary with extensive references to the (contemporary) literature on Aristotle's natural science, only the second complete commentary in the English language since Ogle's 1882 annotated translation.² In his introduction Lennox warns the reader that his commentary is uncharacteristically long for a work in the Clarendon Aristotle series; but in this case, self-chastisement for discursive length is undeserved. A commentary which introduces the layperson to key concepts of Aristotle's natural science while providing useful limited background information on the physiology of fish and the like in some 220 pages is rather economical. The commentary is systematic in that it consistently thematizes two philosophical questions of interpretation relating directly to Lennox's previous scholarship on Aristotle's natural science: (1) What is the relationship between the "philosophical norms" in PA 1 and Aristotle's explanatory practice in PA 2–4? (Lennox in brief: for the most part, there is one); and (2) How does the theory and practice of explanation in PA fit with that espoused in the Analytica Posteriora (AP)? (Lennox in brief: there is a fit, but PA supplements AP in important respects). Besides these questions, the commentary also systematically treats two rather philological difficulties: (3) the matter of the similar accounts of uniform parts given in PA 2 and in Metereology 4; and (4) the problem of the diverging descriptions in PA and Historia Animalium of the same animals parts.

The discussions of these problems will benefit the interested scholar in ancient philosophy and the history of science. The general reader, however, might find much which is too detailed for her interests, and little which is relevant to textual problems as such. One could perhaps fault Lennox for focusing almost exclusively on current research on Aristotle and including few references to the broader (and growing) literature on the history of biological and medical science. Such references might indeed have made PA more accessible by means of contextualization. Nevertheless, this specialized scholarly treatment of Aristotle's text remains, for the most part, accessible to the generalist and will certainly contribute to further appreciation of the Stagirite as a careful and well-informed philosophical investigator of animals.