This book addresses two major problems in interpreting Aristotle. Firstly, should we reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of the corpus by assuming an underlying unity of doctrine (unitarianism), or by positing a sequence of developing ideas (developmentalism)? Secondly, what is the relation between the so-called logical works on the one hand and the physical-metaphysical treatises on the other? Although the problems appear to be unrelated, the book finds that the key to the first lies in the second, and in doing so provides an alternative to the unitarian approach, the first since Jaeger's ... More

This book addresses two major problems in interpreting Aristotle. Firstly, should we reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of the corpus by assuming an underlying unity of doctrine (unitarianism), or by positing a sequence of developing ideas (developmentalism)? Secondly, what is the relation between the so-called logical works on the one hand and the physical-metaphysical treatises on the other? Although the problems appear to be unrelated, the book finds that the key to the first lies in the second, and in doing so provides an alternative to the unitarian approach, the first since Jaeger's pioneering developmental study of 1923.