alyssabeth's review against another edition
4.0
I have yet to finish this book, I admit, but I will at some point. I have read most of it though, and am fairly impressed. It's a somewhat difficult and fact-rich read, but that's only because there's so much to learn from it! I'm happy to say that I know far more about Aristotle than I did prior to reading this.
cmccafe's review against another edition
2.0
I skipped a bunch of chapters in the middle of this book. Leroi has some amazing moments early on, and it's enjoyable to watch him wax poetical about just how much he loves Aristotle. But it's also clear that he doesn't really 'get' Aristotle, and constantly judges those doctrines of his with a properly metaphysical basis simply on the grounds of "we don't believe that sort of thing anymore". Disappointing by the end after a strong and promising beginning.
troystory's review
3.0
Honestly, this book only started to get good around halfway through. Until then, it was pretentious and, in my opinion anyway, devoid of anything meaningful. It was basically an over exaggerated shrine to Aristotle - one that did a terrible job at explaining just why it put him on a pedestal. At some point, it started to feel less like "Aristotle invented science all by himself but none of my claims explain that" and more like "Aristotle contributed to science, and we should recognize that more" and only then did it actually start to be enjoyable. It did have some interesting things to say, but over all, I wasn't too big a fan. I didn't particularly like the writing style, which seemed to put more of an emphasis on being fancy and prose-like, while sacrificing sense and structure. And there were chapters that felt out of place or pointless. However, if you strip all that away, it is, at its core, an interesting book. I'm giving it three stars because I didn't hate it, but I didn't exactly like it. I probably wouldn't read it again - though, if you are fascinated by science and happen to know a lot of biology jargon, I would recommend this book. It's a matter of personal taste, i believe.
kitschbitsch's review
4.0
In places a little too biologically technical but I still enjoyed reading about the scientific side of Aristotle, having previously only known his philosophical works.
archytas's review against another edition
2.0
Most of the way through this terminally repetitive book I was thinking that I would write a gently critical review of this book, which seems to miss its own point. But then I got to part where the author defends Aristotle's views on 'natural slavery' by referencing factory-floor capitalism and Apartheid South Africa (the idea that some people are suited for manual labour only has persisted through state societies). While he coyly declines to either endorse or condemn the idea that some people deserve to be treated like disposable machinery (in a different section he also notes that it isn't his place to discuss Aristotle' views on women as 'monstrous'), on the very next page he is not so coy in roundly denouncing Athenian democracy. So y'know, I decided to be less coy.
The biggest problem with this book is not actually that Leroi doesn't understand Aristotle (although he doesn't). It is that Leroi doesn't understand Leroi - that is he doesn't see himself as having a worldview at all. He has no sense of how societies shape the values, the ideas and hence the science around them. Leroi himself has all the marks of a crude Dawson acolyte, who treats differences of worldviews as hallmarks of genetic stupidity, and assumes that Science is always capitalised.
Consequently, the book's entire purpose seems to be to reinvent Aristotle as an evolutionary biologist, who, maddeningly and inexplicably, doesn't get evolution. (Leroi pouts in several places that Aristotle had all the tools he needed to understand natural selection and evolution, he just didn't have the 'will'). And while in service of this, Leroi does a solid - if often tedious - job of constructing and analysing Aristotle's contribution to natural science, it turns the brilliant, holistic philosopher who did more than anyone else to synergise philosophy, science, educational theory and politics into a single entity into a banal and two-dimensional natural scientist. By missing the way that Aristotle's ideas about form, about human processes intersect with the idea of the mind and how we think - and how that fits within a universal pattern - Leroi misinterprets much of Aristotle.
The book gets two stars because he really does do a passable job of summarising - and this IS the bulk of the book - Aristotles anatomical findings and reporting them against modern findings. Even there though - this book is a chore to read and Aristotle is sheer magical pleasure to read. So I can't help but to recommend to leap straight into Aristotle's work with a good modern commentary - trust me, it is a life changing experience and much more joyful than this repetitive, offensive work.
(edited to fix typos, one of my phone reviews)
The biggest problem with this book is not actually that Leroi doesn't understand Aristotle (although he doesn't). It is that Leroi doesn't understand Leroi - that is he doesn't see himself as having a worldview at all. He has no sense of how societies shape the values, the ideas and hence the science around them. Leroi himself has all the marks of a crude Dawson acolyte, who treats differences of worldviews as hallmarks of genetic stupidity, and assumes that Science is always capitalised.
Consequently, the book's entire purpose seems to be to reinvent Aristotle as an evolutionary biologist, who, maddeningly and inexplicably, doesn't get evolution. (Leroi pouts in several places that Aristotle had all the tools he needed to understand natural selection and evolution, he just didn't have the 'will'). And while in service of this, Leroi does a solid - if often tedious - job of constructing and analysing Aristotle's contribution to natural science, it turns the brilliant, holistic philosopher who did more than anyone else to synergise philosophy, science, educational theory and politics into a single entity into a banal and two-dimensional natural scientist. By missing the way that Aristotle's ideas about form, about human processes intersect with the idea of the mind and how we think - and how that fits within a universal pattern - Leroi misinterprets much of Aristotle.
The book gets two stars because he really does do a passable job of summarising - and this IS the bulk of the book - Aristotles anatomical findings and reporting them against modern findings. Even there though - this book is a chore to read and Aristotle is sheer magical pleasure to read. So I can't help but to recommend to leap straight into Aristotle's work with a good modern commentary - trust me, it is a life changing experience and much more joyful than this repetitive, offensive work.
(edited to fix typos, one of my phone reviews)
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