Abstract Summary
How are animals to be classified? What gives unity to an animal species? What are the criteria for animals to be part of the same species? Variants of such problems are as intriguing to contemporary philosophers as they were to Scholastic scholars after Michael Scot translated three of Aristotle’s works on animals (History of Animals, Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals) from Arabic into Latin at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The first extant commentary (1240s) on this compilation, entitled De animalibus, was written by Peter of Spain, a physician, who most likely also commented on the Articella, a standard medical textbook at the time. Somewhat later, Albert the Great (1200-1280) wrote a second and much more influential commentary on the same compilation with more than 40 manuscripts still extant. In my presentation, I intend to explore the fabric of questions about animal species and classification as it was proposed in the commentaries of Peter and Albert, and I will show that these classifications extended well beyond an easy appeal to common natures or essences. I also intend to show how these classifications of animals were inseparably linked to the way in which the science of animals was construed, and how it was supposed to relate to natural philosophy and to medicine.
