ARISTOTLE – Manuscript commentary on Aristotle's Physics [Pisa?, late 1500s].

In Latin. 646 pages, 206 x 150mm, individual leaves numbered on upper right of recto. Modern boards.

A late sixteenth-century commentary on the fourth book of Aristotle's Physics, written by a teacher in the form of a series of quaestiones and dating from the time when Galileo was a student and later chair of mathematics and physics at Pisa. The writer, who claims in the text to have taught 170 lessons on Aristotle ("Expositionem meam in libris de physico auditu, in qua iam 170 lectiones ad vos habui..."), is presumed to be a teacher, possibly from Pisa. Aristotle's fourth book concerns the nature of motion, setting its preconditions in terms of place, void and time. His challenge to the atomists on the existence of voids is covered here ("An detur vacuum in natura" and "An dato vacuum, possit in eo fieri motus") as is his work on the nature of time ("An tempus sit recte definitum," "An tempus habeat esse extra animam," and "An tempus sit unus"). The final sections concern motion, concluding with the question of "An motus caeli sit regularis et uniformis."