Craig Martin. Subverting Aristotle

The cover of Craig Martin’s Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science hints at the surprises inside. A cross replaces the T and a Π stands for the N in the title, beneath which Aristotle’s effigy is set upside down. While the cover intrigues, this wide-ranging book proceeds to overturn favorite assumptions and generalizations about Aristotle in the early modern period. In European intellectual history, Aristotle casts a very long shadow indeed. As medieval translations made most of his extant work available to peoples of the Book, some Peripatetic views clashed with shared tenets of their religions (creation, the soul’s immortality, etc.). Yet Aristotle’s approaches to and explanations of nature were too impressive to ignore. They persuaded Moses Maimonides, Averroes, and many Latin masters in the thirteenth-century faculties of arts that Aristotle understood fundamental truths about the world. Widely diffused in the universities, Aristotle’s logic and natural philosophy promoted the development of a scientific culture in medieval Europe. In addition, his philosophical categories helped Thomas Aquinas and others to solve theological problems. And yet, Aristotle surely was subverted.

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