Reflections on Ruth Glasner’s Averroes’ Physics

Ruth Glasner’s Averroes’ Physics is one of the finest studies on Averroes, one of the best on medieval Aristotelianism, and one of the most important contributions of modern scholarship to understanding the history of medieval science. The present article seeks to make clear what is so special about the work. It first situates Glasner’s book in the context of present-day research on Averroes and suggests in what ways it responds to the main desiderata in the field of Averroean studies. It then points to some of the most instructive contributions of the work. In short, thanks to Glasner, we now see Averroes not only as the outstanding explicator of Aristotle, but as a creative scientific mind as well. We now know him much better than he has ever been known.