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Aristotle: Understanding the World's Greatest Philosopher - John Sellars ****

You wait ages for a good book on Ancient Greek philosopher, and two come along in a matter of weeks. Hot on the heels of Rovelli's Anaximander comes Aristotle from John Sellars.

For me, this is the ideal way to get an introduction to one of the great philosophers (I find it hard to truly support Sellars' superlative) - like most people, I suspect, I had heard of Aristotle but didn't know much about him. I'd read bits of his books on logic, physics and natural history and all his surviving Poetics, but had no overview. This is a proper introduction to the topic, not a watered-down text book - not too long at around 100 pages, and aimed at those with very little existing knowledge, presenting Aristotle's life, work and impact in an approachable fashion.

As was the case with Anaximander, one of the impressive things about Aristotle was that his work covered such a wide range of topics. Sellars introduces us to, amongst other things, Aristotle on the nature of being, logic (establishing some aspects of the field), nature, politics, literature and plays (sadly without knowing the content of his book on comedy) and what makes a good life. I'd have liked a bit more from his Physics, notably his thoughts on infinity, but in an introduction of this length, you can't pack everything in.

Until recently, scientists have been hard on Aristotle, pointing out the way that his theories on matter and cosmology held back science, while often highlighting his unscientific approach in the way that he apparently stated women had fewer teeth than men while never bothering to actually check. If I have one criticism of Sellars is the extent to which he presents Aristotle's philosophy and proto-science without going into its limitations - he often states Aristotle's view without criticism. Several times, Sellars emphasises the way that (in his natural history work), Aristotle demonstrates a stress on observation rather than pure philosophical argument - but this perhaps overplays the degree to which Aristotle truly took a scientific viewpoint (not something that we would particularly expect in this period).

Did Aristotle have a huge impact on the development of thought and on the eventual birth of real science? Absolutely. We can't truly understand science without putting it into context - and having a better understanding of Aristotle is an excellent contribution to this requirement.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
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