This test topic lays the groundwork for a large-scale, interdisciplinary project studying Aristotle’s role, and that of Aristotelianism, in the history of thought about health, disease and medicine from antiquity until the 21^st century. By ‘Aristotelianism’ we refer not only to the use of Aristotle as a scientific authority. We also take it to refer to the broader intellectual tradition of reflection on science and scientific method in dialogue with Aristotle’s works, a tradition in which science is primarily empirical, deductive, and teleological.

The project’s aim will be two-fold: first, to better understand the dialogue, continued from antiquity, between Aristotelianism and medicine in the Islamicate, Byzantine and Latin traditions and in the timeframe of the Scientific Revolution; and second, to show how Aristotle’s formative role in the Western medical tradition continues to be of relevance today in contemporary medical science and practice, especially in the epistemology of medicine and the current discussion about ‘Translation’, i.e. the dialogue between fundamental biomedical research and clinical practice. The project will include classicists, philosophers, historians of medicine and science, Arabists, Byzantinists, experts in Medieval Scholasticism, experts in the Early Modern period and medical scientists.

To explore the feasibility of a project of this size and complexity, we will invite a number of experts to a workshop to discuss details of the project and to take preparatory steps towards a funding application.