Parts of Animals

De partibus animalium (Gr. peri zoon Morion, On the Parts of Animals ) is a resultant in the 4th century BC, scientific writing of Aristotle, dealing as part of its zoology with the parts of animals and their functions. "Component " he understands not only the limbs and organs, but all the components and products of the body, so, for example, blood, semen and milk.

Content

The writing is incurred after the Historia animalium and sets their knowledge of the reader forward. Following evaluation in the earlier work of sifting of the substance now the attention is directed mainly to the discussion of the causes of the phenomena. The final cause is in the foreground, as Aristotle thinks teleological.

The work consists of four books. Book I justifies the zoology as an independent science and discusses in detail the method of zoological studies, where Aristotle argues for a holistic view of living beings. The following three books contain out the practical application of the methodology, the explanation of the biological facts from their causes. Aristotle divided his material according to species, but according to body substances and organs, where he considers the two main groups of bloodless animals and blood animals separately.

The first book is apparently arose independently from the others. Famous is his fifth chapter in which Aristotle explains why the referral with animals - even with low and ugly - useful and profitable, and not (as some contemporaries thought ) of a philosopher is unworthy.

Two basic assumptions, of which Aristotle here - as in other zoological works - runs out on his search for the causes of the symptoms are:

  • Nature never produces something unnecessary and superfluous.
  • Nature equips each species look like it is best for the prosperity of this kind; she chooses under the given possibilities of always the most appropriate.

Effect

After the death of Aristotle, his students have the research program he had outlined and begun in his zoological writings, almost entirely neglected, apart from Theophrastus, who wrote several mostly not preserved treatises on animals. Throughout the ancient world, no one has written a review of De partibus animalium and other zoological works. The historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertius called De partibus animalium not among the works of Aristotle, it has therefore not known. Galen knew the zoological writings of Aristotle and used it by quoting some of the statements partly affirmative and partly negative. But he also has not researched further zoological in the sense conceived by Aristotle program.

Since the 9th century, De partibus animalium was in an Arabic translation. It was written by an unknown translator, which one has previously identified wrongly with Yahya ibn al - Bitriq. This translation of De partibus animalium was part of the nine in ten books ( maqālāt ) articulated Kitaab al - hayawān (Book of Animals ), the translator put together three zoological writings of Aristotle: Historia animalium (Book 1-10), De partibus animalium ( Book 11-14) and De generatione animalium (Book 15-19). The three components were not marked by your own headers as separate units. The famous Arab scholar Avicenna, Averroes and Ibn Bāǧǧa commented De partibus animalium in whole or in part.

At the latest 1220 Michael Scot translated the book of animals from Arabic into Latin, and so it was the Latin -speaking world under the title De animalibus libri XIX ( Nineteen books about the animals ) are known. 1260 William of Moerbeke produced a Latin translation at second, where he went from the Greek text. The younger translation displaced from the 14th century to slow the older one.

De animalibus was a basic textbook for the scholastic philosophical anthropology and zoology of the late Middle Ages. Albertus Magnus wrote an extensive treatise De animalibus ( About the Animals ) in 26 books; 11-14 in book he treated in accordance with Aristotle the constituents of the body.

After 1450, the humanist Theodorus Gaza created a new one, the former claims sufficient Latin translation, which was first printed in 1476 and 1504 was published by Aldus Manutius in Venice. This Latin standard text made ​​in the future the basis for the scientific discussion of the work.

1882 Charles Darwin wrote in a letter with reference to De partibus animalium: " Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but compared to the old Aristotle they were just schoolboys. "

Expenditure

  • Aristotle: Parts of Animals, ed. Arthur Leslie Peck, London, 1961 ( Greek text and English translation)

Translations ( medieval )

  • Remke Kruk (ed.): Aristotle. The Arabic version of Aristotle 's Parts of Animals. Book XI -XIV of the Kitāb al - Ḥayawān, North -Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1979
  • Aafke van Oppenraaij MI (ed.): Aristotle, De animalibus. Michael Scot 's Arabic - Latin Translation, Part 2: Books XI -XIV: Parts of Animals, Brill, Leiden 1998

Translations ( modern)

  • Aristotle: On the parts of living things, translated and explained by Wolfgang Kullmann, Berlin 2007 ISBN 978-3-05-002291-8 ( works in German translation, edited by Hellmut Flashar, Vol 17 [ zoological writings II] Part 1. . )
  • Aristotle: On the limbs of the creatures, translated by Paul Gohlke, Paderborn 1959 ( Aristotle: The treatises Vol 8.2 )
  • Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals, trans. by James G. Lennox, Oxford, 2001. ISBN 0-19-875109-5 (English translation and detailed commentary )
234416
de