Aristotle’s Protreptic to the Study of Animals and Plants in _On the Parts of Animals_.

I attribute an entire new chapter of material to the reconstruction of Aristotle’s Protrepticus: the large and continuous excerpts contained in Iamblichus’ On the Common Mathematical Sciences chapter xxvii. This material has never been attributed to the lost work before and expands the evidence base of the work by about 75 lines of Greek. I further show that the famous protreptic to the study of plants and animals in Aristotle’s On the Parts of Animals I.5 is a text re-use and adaptation, on Aristotle’s part, of material (originally about mathematics) from his earlier popular dialogue the Protrepticus. This helps explain the often noted point that this part of the PA is stylistically different from the rest of the work. More importantly, it provides further evidence for Aristotle’s method of writing (which has already been observed for the opening of the Metaphysics, which is also a re-use and adaptation from the earlier Protrepticus). Most importantly, it shows how Aristotle made a breakthrough in the history and philosophy of science by conceiving (for the first time) a method for the study of plants and animals (and thus establishing the scientific fields we know as botany, zoology, and in general biology).