Una difesa dello studio della materia vivente: Aristotele, De partibus animalium I 5

Plants and animals: for Aristotle there is nothing more familiar and at the same time intellectually stimulating than living nature. Aristotle’s research on comparative anatomy and physiology represents the most creative part of his intellectual maturity, the largest part of his corpus of works, and the foundation of a new scientific discipline, biology. To defend the dignity of this new discipline from the prejudices of his time, Aristotle composes a passionate speech: De partibus animalium i 5. This paper aims to reconstruct in details his arguments for the dignity and beauty of the philosophical investigation on living matter. I will argue that in order to convince his audience, Aristotle contrasts biology not only to astronomy, as generally recognized, but also to another «divine science»: Platonic philosophy. I will show that it is the eye of science that makes the «humble» objects of biology «divine». For the physikos’ causal perspective reveals that «in all natural things there is somewhat of the marvellous»: the telos that informs living matter.