Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science will be out early next year from My new bookwill be out early next year from Editiones Scholasticae . More information forthcoming, but to whet your appetite, here are the cover copy and the detailed table of contents:





Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle’s Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science. Among the many topics covered are the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; and neuroscientific reductionism. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0. Preface





1. Two philosophies of nature





1.1 What is the philosophy of nature?

1.2 Aristotelian philosophy of nature in outline

1.2.1 Actuality and potentiality

1.2.2 Hylemorphism

1.2.3 Limitation and change

1.2.4 Efficient and final causality

1.2.5 Living substances

1.3 The mechanical world picture

1.3.1 Key elements of the mechanical philosophy

1.3.2 Main arguments for the mechanical philosophy





2. The scientist and scientific method





2.1 The arch of knowledge and its “empiriometric” core

2.2 The intelligibility of nature

2.3 Subjects of experience

2.4 Being in the world

2.4.1 Embodied cognition

2.4.2 Embodied perception

2.4.3 The scientist as social animal

2.5 Intentionality

2.6 Connections to the world

2.7 Aristotelianism begins at home





3. Science and reality





3.1 Verificationism and falsificationism

3.2 Epistemic structural realism

3.2.1 Scientific realism

3.2.2 Structure

3.2.3 Epistemic not ontic

3.3 How the laws of nature lie (or at least engage in mental reservation)

3.4 The hollow universe





4. Space, time, and motion





4.1 Space

4.1.1 Does physics capture all there is to space?

4.1.2 Abstract not absolute

4.1.3 The continuum

4.2 Motion

4.2.1 How many kinds of motion are there?

4.2.2 Absolute and relative motion

4.2.3 Inertia

4.2.3.1 Aristotle versus Newton?

4.2.3.2 Why the conflict is illusory

4.2.3.3 Is inertia real?

4.2.3.4 Change and inertia

4.3 Time

4.3.1 What is time?

4.3.2 The ineliminability of tense

4.3.2.1 Time and language

4.3.2.2 Time and experience

4.3.3 Aristotle versus Einstein?

4.3.3.1 Making a metaphysics of method

4.3.3.2 Relativity and the A-theory

4.3.4 Against the spatialization of time

4.3.5 The metaphysical impossibility of time travel

4.3.6 In defense of presentism

4.3.7 Physics and the funhouse mirror of nature





5. The philosophy of matter





5.1 Does physics capture all there is to matter?

5.2 Aristotle and quantum mechanics

5.2.1 Quantum hylemorphism

5.2.2 Quantum mechanics and causality

5.3 Chemistry and reductionism

5.4 Primary and secondary qualities

5.5 Is computation intrinsic to physics?

5.5.1 The computational paradigm

5.5.2 Searle’s critique

5.5.3 Aristotle and computationalism





6. Animate nature





6.1 Against biological reductionism

6.1.1 What is life?

6.1.2 Genetic reductionism

6.1.3 Function and teleology

6.1.4 The hierarchy of life forms

6.2 Aristotle and evolution

6.2.1 Species essentialism

6.2.2 Natural selection is teleological

6.2.3 Transformism

6.2.4 Problems with some versions of “Intelligent Design” theory