Abstract

At one point in this engaging collection of essays, G. E. R. Lloyd describes Aristotle's "sense of the interdependence of philosophical analysis and detailed empirical investigation", a description which fits the author himself. Lloyd is sensitive to the peculiarities of Aristotle's texts without sinking so deeply into their oddities that they lose focus and theoretical interest. With admirable lucidity Lloyd lays out the complex requirements of Aristotle's "official" theory of scientific demonstration, and then discusses the ways in which Aristotle's scientific practice sometimes fits, and sometimes influences, the theory. Lloyd provides a pluralist interpretation of Aristotelian scientific method, and then demonstrates the ways Aristotle complicates his theory in order to fit the messy natural world.