ARISTOTLES ANATOMICAL PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

This paper explores the anatomical foundations of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Rather than simply looking at the body, he contrives speci fic procedures for revealing unmanifest phenomena. In some cases, thes e interventions seem extensive enough to qualify as experiments. At th e work bench, one can observe the parts of animals in the manner Arist otle describes, even if his descriptions seem at odds with 20th centur y textbooks. Manipulating animals allows us to recover his teleologica l thought more fully. This consideration of Aristotle as a sophisticat ed biologist helps our reading of his writings in other areas of philo sophy.