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BOOK REVIEWS 163 why Aristotle says that there is more design, more good, and more beauty in the works of nature than in those of art. Although he is a noted philosopher of biology in his own right (next to Ernst Mayr perhaps the premier philosopher of biology in the world), Ruse has given us in his latest book more history than direct philosophical reflection. But as one reads through all these biologists and thinkers as they thrash about trying to exorcise, or baptize, the notion of progress, one sighs and wonders how different things could have been if they could only have discussed the idea of progress in biology with, not against, Aristotle. Regis University Denver, Colorado EDWARDT. OAKES, S.J. Robert Grosseteste: On the Six Days ofCreation. Translated by C. F.J. MARTIN. Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 6 (2). New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 373. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-726150-7. In the decade before the great English Scholastic Robert Grosseteste received consecration as bishop of Lincoln he turned his energies increasingly to the study and teaching of theology and to learning Greek so as to read in the original the classics of the Greek Fathers and the antique philosophers, especially Aristotle. The combination of these activities yielded, at the very end of this period, between 1232 and 1235, his extraordinary commentary cum rumination on the first chapters of Genesis, a work that can stand as introduction to the state of science as well as theology among the intellectual luminaries of Latin Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century. Fifteen years ago the critical edition of the Latin original of Grosseteste's commentary appeared under the title Hexameron, expertly edited by Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben. Now Christopher Martin of the University of Glasgow has done us the favor of making the text available outside the circle of Latin readers by translating it into a clear, sometimes even elegant English. Since this work deserves the attention not only of medievalists of all stripes but also of philosophers, theologians, and anyone interested in the history of European thought, its translation with such obvious attention and care-and Martin confesses in his preface how exhausting the task proved to be-was surely worth the effort. Scholars and students alike can rely on his rendering to be both faithful to the original and sufficiently explanatory to provide a 164 BOOK REVIEWS modern readership with all that is needed to comprehend it. Though Martin has not ventured farther than Dales and Gieben in searching for sources and references-indeed, on the infrequent occasions where the original editors failed to annotate a quotation he has simply replicated their silence-the critical edition was so well supplied with citations that the most curious of readers will be satisfied with the result. There are, to be sure, a few typos as well as a number of spots where the translation is dubious or imprecise, but for the current world of expedited publishing the instances are delightfully rare, almost always inconsequential. The only cases in which the reader might be seriously misled come in the following places: page 4, where the heading for chapter 9.1-2 ought to read that "by means of signification he (i.e., Moses) overthrows various errors claiming that there are many principia"; page 18, paragraph 16, where Grosseteste talks about the solicitude required for illness serving to break the onslaught of libido; page 83, paragraph 2 of chapter 23, where he argues not against "darkness" as having been "created together with heaven and earth" but rather against its having existed, uncreated, alongside them from the start; page 148, chapter 23, which should read that the order of production of herbs existed only naturally if they arose all at once, not that it "existed naturally . . . only if" such was the case; and finally page 298, paragraph 5, where Grosseteste prescribes that flesh should serve and obey the spirit, not, as the translation reads, "the body." Against these few examples must be balanced, of course, the numerous occasions where Martin's insight into the Latin opens the way to understanding where the text might...

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