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Aristotle and Modern Genetics
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 66, Number 2, April 2005
- pp. 201-221
- 10.1353/jhi.2005.0041
- Article
- Additional Information
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We assess Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes in relation to current research on the development of organisms. Our goals are four-fold: first, to present and critically challenge what has become an orthodox interpretation of Aristotle among biologists; second, to present and defend a more adequate account of organismal development; third, to elaborate and justify a novel account of Aristotle's natural teleology, one at odds with the orthodox interpretation; and fourth, to illustrate how our reading of Aristotle, if right, permits a more fruitful encounter between Aristotle and modern biology than that imagined by Aristotle's latter-day biological interpreters.