Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 139-141 [Access article in PDF] Helen S. Lang. The Order of Nature in Aristotle's Physics: Place and the Elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 324. £40. This is an unsuccessful book. Some of the reasons for its failure are complex, others are more simple. I cannot address all, but shall simply discuss the fundamental claims about four large topical units—about nature, place, void and elemental motion—indicating why they are untenable.Discussing the celebrated definition of nature in Physics II.1, Lang contends that in it the verb kineisthai should be taken in the passive voice, that nature should be understood as a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest, and not just blandly as a principle of motion and rest. Since Aristotle asserts in Book VIII of the Physics that the elements contain a passive principle of motion (255b30f), Lang's contention would mean that the elements in this respect do not differ from other natural entities. This is highly unlikely, given the systematic contrast of self-moving composite natural entities and simple, unarticulated elemental natures at 255a5-18. Lang goes so far as to assert [End Page 139] that "kineisthai is always passive, not middle (or reflexive), in both Plato and Aristotle" (42). Fortunately, we need not accept this on her word: although kineisthai can be both passive and middle, in some instances (notably in aorist and future), passive and middle forms are different. Accordingly, Lang's claim must be rejected on the basis of the very first passage she helpfully quotes as an "additional example" in n.24 on p.42: Physics VII.1 242a37f employs the middle voice future, kinesétai, and not the passive form, kinethésetai. The passage, teeming with different forms of the verb kineisthai, describes an entity which contains the principle of motion in itself, which moves naturally. This indisputably shows that Lang's contention is wrong.Lang, contrary to the well-entrenched scholarly consensus, claims that place is not the first (=innermost) extremity or first unmoved boundary of the containing body, but the extremity of the first body, i.e., of the celestial sphere. (The transposition of the qualification "first" happens in several, non-conclusive installments, see e.g. 99f, or 106f.) This transposition, however, runs counter to several of Aristotle's stipulations about place. Lang's all-encompassing extremity can only be the common (koinos) place of everything there is, whereas Aristotle is keen on finding the proper or particular (idios) place, a location which contains nothing but the entity itself (209a32-b1). The entirety of the discussion in Physics IV.4-5 attests that it is this latter place which Aristotle defines here: the first place is neither smaller, nor bigger than the thing in place (211a1f, a23-29, a31-33, etc.). Aristotle repeatedly stresses that the extremities of the contained body and its container are "in the same" (211a33f, b11f). This remark surely would be out of place about the remote extremity of the first containing body. It is also repeatedly set out that the direction of explanation is bottom-up, and not top-down, as Lang's all-encompassing universal place would require: it is by being in a particular locus that we can be said to be in (the sphere of) air, and by this in the heaven (209a33-b1, 211a23-26).Lang's proposal is not just theoretically unappealing. The traditional should not be rejected recklessly, without an attentive discussion. After all, it "apparently beg[a]n immediately with Theophrastus," as Lang rather uncannily admits (105), and it was Theophrastus, and not Lang, who studied and worked for decades with Aristotle.A key assertion of the chapter on void also rests on a grave philological blunder. Lang argues that interpreters switched from Aristotle's expression "that through which" (to di' hou) to "medium," thereby surrendering the original net of notions, in which the natural activity of the element impeded the progression of the...