Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study

by Joe Sachs, Aristotle

This is a new translation, with introduction, commentary, and an explanatory glossary. "Sachs's translation and commentary rescue Aristotle's text from the rigid, pedantic, and misleading versions that have until now obscured his thought. Thanks to Sachs's superb guidance, the Physics comes alive as a profound dialectical inquiry whose insights into the enduring questions about nature, cause, change, time, and the 'infinite' are still pertinent today. Using such guided studies in class has been exhilarating both for myself and my students."  ––Leon R. Kass, The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago  Aristotle’s Physics is the only complete and coherent  book we have from the ancient world in which a thinker of the first rank seeks to say something about nature as a whole. For centuries, Aristotle’s inquiry into the causes and conditions of motion and rest dominated science and philosophy. To understand the intellectual assumptions of a powerful world view—and the roots of the Scientific Revolution—reading Aristotle is critical. Yet existing translations of Aristotle’s Physics have made it difficult to understand either Aristotle’s originality or the lasting value of his work.

In this volume in the Masterworks of Discovery series, Joe Sachs provides a new plain-spoken English translation of all of Aristotle’s classic treatise and accompanies it with a long interpretive introduction, a running explication of the text, and a helpful glossary. He succeeds brilliantly in fulfilling the aim of this innovative to give the general reader the tools to read and understand a masterwork of scientific discovery. 

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction

278 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995

Reviews

[Marcela · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five stars go to The-Divine-Aristotle. What an impressive work. I always thought the Metaphysics and the Ethics were the definite summit, but the Physics certainly stands on the same level.

Now, a note on this particular edition:
Unfortunately, I couldn't stand Sach's translation and had to move to the Loeb edition. I really like Joe Sachs' scholarly work on Aristotle. Unlike most of the secondary literature I read, I've always found Sachs' commentaries illuminating, insightful, tremendously fresh. I also sympathize with his attempts to bring back the "nakedness" of Aristotle's Greek by avoiding the Latin cognates that we've inherited from the Latin tradition, which usually cover Aristotle's words with a whole array of meanings and interpretations that might actually blur his original thought: accident, actuality, matter are just some examples of this. I've found his translations helpful when looking at a particular passage by contrasting other translations with the one Sachs suggests and having the key Greek words in mind. However, as a stand-alone translation, I couldn't take this for very long. In his introduction, he says that he violates English sensibilities "for the common human purposes of joining Aristotle in thinking that breaks through the habitual and into the philosophic." I'm sure that Sachs' did a great job here, but I think this translation can only really speak to those who are already very familiar with the Physics or who know Aristotle's Greek enough to "retranslate" the English into the Greek. When I've read some of Sachs' articles, I've seen the value of translating, e.g., "entelecheia" as "being-at-work-staying-itself", but only because I know that the awkward phrase means "entelecheia"—and I'm familiar with the Greek notion. I can take Sachs' translation for a paragraph or so, when analyzing a very specific point, but the Physics is a long, difficult work, and Sachs' translation—a "Gringlish" translation, neither Greek nor English, he acknowledges—only made it harder for me to read. I found the Loeb's translation much clearer, and I appreciated the effort of the translator to unpack what's contained in some ridiculously condensed Greek phrases. Sachs wants you to do the job, but again, this already requires a great familiarity with the text and with Aristotle himself. The Loeb introductions to each book and the "roadmap" for each chapter are particularly helpful.
Finally, I didn't totally dismissed Sachs' edition. His short commentaries at the end of each book are, as usual, very pithy and poignant. I wouldn't call it "A guided study", though.

[Benjamin Winter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This translation, while novel, is terribly stilted. Although it claims to be avoided archaism, it branches off too far from the intellectual tradition within which Aristotle has been received. The author has thus made the text all the more confusing, utilizing phrases such as: "But the being-at-work-staying-itself of what is potentially, whenever, being fully at work, it is at work not as itself but just as movable, is motion." (74) I could give many other examples. In all, I left this work feeling much less close to Aristotle, and wondering what I was missing so as not to enjoy this translation. The commentary itself, though, is at times insightful.

[Reagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What exactly is a nature? What does it mean for something to be moved? How can we be sure there is no void? How can we refute Zeno’s paradoxes on motion and time?

Aristotle’s Physics is groundbreaking to have been written so long ago, and it still is unrivaled in its exploration on nature and movement even by today’s standards. It is a must-read for those interested in the intersection between mathematics and philosophy, and even theology. Aristotle paves the way to connect several different avenues of thought and reality, which renders it completely impossible to summarize in a few sentences.

One must understand how Aristotle lays down his arguments — typically, he at first lays down common belief and explores why it is incorrect, but he does this through the form of question and answer. We come to Aristotle’s conclusions gradually as he refines his definitions of nature and motion. Aristotle doesn’t spell anything out for us; rather, we are forced to partake in the entire journey of reason, which eventually coalesces to a point that sets the ground for another exploration of reality, his work Metaphysics.

It’s an extremely challenging read best understood by reading aloud and concurrently with another person with whom you can discuss. Very glad I read this, even if it was for philosophy class. I feel like my brain is heavier now.

[Lance Lusk · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that Aristotle's Physics is a groundbreaking achievement in human thought would be an understatement. Yes, it takes close reading and work, but the rewards for doing so are vast. Furthermore, Sachs' translation does the nearly impossible: it captures the nuances in the original Greek that have often been rendered either misleadingly or flat out incomprehensible. Highly recommended!

[Trey Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. It’s got the prime mover and everything. Plus much of it has been vindicated by Quantum Physics.

[Tayylor]

Books I - III fully completed, plus commentaries of Books IV - VIII.

Very interesting, but it is difficult to get through and understand. As far as Sachs’s translation goes, I actually enjoyed his choice of words and phrases, but I still don’t necessarily agree with his assessment of other translations. This is a useful guide, though, as Sachs shows how Aristotle fits into modern thought, and the commentaries really help to identify Aristotle’s main points and how they form a comprehensive whole. I doubt I would have understood half of what I read without Sachs’s insight.

[Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hylomorphism is almost certainly a better account of the world than anything we’ve come up with since Galileo.

[Hooper Bring]

Stahlman says you must start with Sachs’ translations of Aristotle.

[Gracyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate metaphysics 😃

[Jerzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't read the whole thing, just intro and commentaries. But I like his explanation for this non-standard translation: He's trying to bring the reader closer to Aristotle's work *itself*, not necessarily to the centuries of commentary and scholarship *about* this work.

Nice section of the intro, contrasting Aristotle's view of physics with the modern worldview:
* p.15: "The glory of the new physics is the power it gains from mathematics. The world that is present to the senses is set aside as 'secondary,' and the mathematical imagination takes over as our way of access to the true world behind the appearances. The only experience that is allowed to count is the controlled experiment, designed in the imagination, with a limited array of possible outcomes that are all interpreted in advance."
[This really speaks to my background in engineering and statistics. A huge part of my job is exactly to bridge that gap between our human experience of the world and mathematically-described designed experiments. Maybe by reading Aristotle's alternative, I can learn to do and communicate my work better?]

[Administrative Law · Rating 4 out of 5]

For an autodidact like myself, this book is a hidden gem. Sachs’ translation avoids the Latin obscurities which drown-out Aristotle’s writing. The explanations at the end of each book are terse and powerful. Leunissen’s Cambridge Critical Guide is constantly splitting ideas apart – but Sachs, by contrast, is stringing everything together into a cohesive vision. One is constantly returning to a view of nature (φύσις) – a blossoming that belongs to ‘animals… plants and the cosmos as a whole’ (78). A view of ‘change’ emerges, that is chased downward into the ‘inner nature of things’ (28) – a wellspring of birth and growth. The concept of ‘motion’ is followed upward towards ‘the cosmos as the outer condition of life’ (28).

I will note that the Hackett edition of Physics has superior formatting. It also has some helpful diagrams for Book VI. The Hackett glossary contains clear rendering of the ancient Greek terms (eg, ‘οὐσία’ instead of just ‘ousia’) – but the content of Sachs glossary is infinitely superior, as is his translation.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Sachs' Aristotle is a joy to read. He brings across a simplicity, a humor and a humanity that is missing in other translations. Sachs helps you befriend Aristotle while other translator's simply help you judge him.

One of the persistent themes of this book is that nature must be taken as a whole and cannot be understood through the abstractions of the mathematical imagination. Ancient as it is, Aristotle's Physics is timely and even prescient for us today. There is no book we need more desperately.

[Tasshin Fogleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly expensive ($30) and the line numbers are annoyingly in the middle of the page, but Sachs' translations are worth the hassle.