Explaining an eclipse

About this book

The Posterior Analytics is Aristotle's main account of the nature and structure of scientific explanation. Much of its second book is concerned with scientific explanations of the essences of things. In Explaining an Eclipse, Owen Goldin presents a close analysis and commentary that form the first book-length study devoted to this text in recent times. He shows how Posterior Analytics 2.1-10 sheds light on Aristotle's philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics. In the standard interpretation of these chapters, Aristotle is chiefly concerned with showing how scientific research moves from a partial understanding of some natural kind to a scientifically adequate understanding of that kind. Goldin argues against this, showing instead that Aristotle's main project is the deepening and elaboration of the theory of scientific explanation that is presented in the first book of the Posterior Analytics and the demonstration of how this theory does not restrict scientific explanations to the expression of genus/species relations. Explaining an Eclipse will be of interest to scholars and students of ancient philosophy and classical studies, and philosophers and historians of science.