Ricerc@Sapienza

In Plato’s Theaetetus Socrates ties wonder and knowledge in a binding knot when he defines wonder as “the only beginning of philosophy” and acknowledges it as a distinctive feature of the philosopher. Aristotle associates wonder with understanding and underlines that both of them are pleasurable as is wisdom. In the Metaphysics the Stagirite links this passion to man’s basic drive for learning and truth, while emphasizing that it possesses both an emotional and a cognitive meaning.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the discontinuity between
animal and human birth. Starting from theories on animal instinct and those on
animal/human behaviour; from Aristotle to Darwin, and the evolutionary
synthesis of the 1940s, from distorted interpretations of Darwin’s thought to
some aspects of modern ethology and animal psychology, and the human birth
theory, the manuscript tries to respond to the old question: what differences
exist between animal behaviour and human behaviour? Trying to answer these

The focus of this contribution is to examine the section 5 (Courtonne) of Basil’s Letter 38 devoted to the rainbow considered as a physical metaphor of the Trinity. The main purpose is to scrutinize the likely ancient pagan sources of Basil’s description of rainbow’s formation. The present article concludes by pointing out that the sources used by Basil could be traced back to Aristotle’s Meteorology and the Stoics (especially Posidonius), without denying an Epicurean influence too.

This paper mainly focuses on a passage of Theophrastus’ work On First Principles – generally
known as Metaphysics – (8b 10-17), in which the Peripatetic philosopher deals with the relationship between sense-perception (aisthesis) and the faculty of thought (dianoia/nous). Thanks to the close analysis of this text one can argue that according to Theophrastus sense-perception is the

It seems undeniable, that in reconstructing the conceptual universe of Hans Jonas's oeuvre a privileged place can, or indeed must, be reserved for his relationship with the classical heritage. Certainly, it is far from easy to provide a clear and detailed outline of this relationship with the ancient philosophical past. Jonas is not the kind of author who peppers his writing with quotes, references, and footnotes. Often his engagement with such a past is a silent one, and only a painstaking approach can reveal the presence of this or that ancient author.

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth study of Physics I,
the first book of Aristotle’s foundational treatise on natural philosophy.
While the text has inspired a rich scholarly literature, this is the first
volume devoted solely to it to have been published for many years,
and it includes a new translation of the Greek text. Book I introduces
Aristotle’s approach to topics such as matter and form, and discusses
the fundamental problems of the study of natural science, examining

The essay addresses the general issues of the role, structure and status of Physics I. First, I seek to clarify the sense in which Physics I is the beginning of Aristotle’s physical project. I argue that, although Physics I’s inquiry is of a scientific and physical kind, it is a relatively free-standing treatise, which plays an introductory role aimed at, as it were, setting the scene for the project as a whole. I highlight various clues that show Physics I’s introductory role: the way in which it describes the central object of natural science (i.e.

The paper provides an interpretation of Aristotle’s view on scientific inquiry as problem solving. It tackles passages where
Aristotle emphasises the role that the problem-solving activity has in science, and where he describes the history of humans’
problem-solving activity and the historical development of natural science as a problem-solving activity. Further, the paper
examines Aristotle’s practice of raising, assessing and solving problems as well as the heuristic procedures he employs to

According to the standard interpretation, in DC I.1 Aristotle provides a series of arguments to prove that the body, insofar as it has three dimensions, has all dimensions, and that the body, insofar as it has all dimensions, is complete. Starting from the ancient to the most recent commentators, the arguments whereby Aristotle proves that the body has all dimensions are considered very weak. This paper sets out to show that DC I.1 does not contain any argument aimed at proving that the body has all dimensions.

In this paper I aim at showing that, in Aristotle's view, spoken and written language differ in their material organisation, in particular in their respective part-whole relations. I argue that, according to Aristotle, written language is an additive system (i.e. a system whose parts exist and are produced prior to what they are parts of), whereas spoken language is a non-additive system (i.e. a system whose parts cannot exist and be produced prior to what they are parts of), and that, in his view, spoken language, qua non-additive system, is analogous to organisms.