Joannis Alexandrei Philosophi in Tres Libros De Anima Aristotelis Breues Annotationes, Ex Dissertationibus Ammonii Hermei, Cum Quibusdam Propriis Meditationibus, Etc

Venice: Apud Hieronymum Scotum, 1554-01-01. Hardcover. Good. Folio. Original vellum. Minor soiling to cover. Good binding and cover. Later leather binding straps. Later end pages. Printer's device on title page. Text generally clean, a few lines of early marginal notation and underlining. Collated: A-L8, M-M6, N-N4, in 8's, with the title as leaf A1. Faint stain on first few leaves. Edito princeps, 1535. Refs: British Museum, p. 44. STC Italy, Vol I. p. 99; Not in Brunet. <br><br> Johannes Philoponus (John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria) was an important Aristotelian commentator and Christian theologian. John's commentaries on Aristotle were influential on medieval and early modern thinkers in Europe, such as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Galileo. Philoponus has been seen as an important precursor to the establishment of empirical philosophy. <BR> In this book Philoponus comments on Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) and substantially modifies Aristotle's ideas. His commentary deals specifically with Aristotle's theory of light, "Philoponus contends that Aristotle' view fails to account both for the laws of optics... [Philoponus modifies] the theory so as to save the phenomena, he proceeds to re-interpret the term Energeia not as a state of actuality, but rather as an 'incorporeal activity' which, besides constituting the transparency of the medium, is also capable of warming bodies...Due to this novel interpretation of Aristotle's terminology, light is now understood not statically but as something dynamical." - Stanford Philosophical Encyclopedia. <BR>It should also be noted that since Michael Hayduck's edition, Berlin 1897, it is generally assumed by scholars that the third book of the commentary that had been ascribed to John Philoponus, wasoriginally written by Stephanus of Alexandria (as is attested in the manuscript Parisinus gr. 1914, 11th/12th cent.) An important early work in physics and natural philosophy.