ORDER NOW: Aristotle’s Revenge (Updated)

UPDATE 3/9: A reader points out that another option, for readers anywhere in the world, is to order through Book Depository.  You can now also order through Barnes and Noble.  The other options, to remind you, are Amazon.com and Casemate Academic (for U.S. orders) and Eurospan, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon's other European sites (for European orders).
  
UPDATE 3/7: At the moment, Amazon is accepting pre-orders again.  These things tend to fluctuate, so check back periodically if the pre-order option temporarily disappears again.  As noted below, you can also pre-order through the U.S. distributor.  European readers can also order through Eurospan.

UPDATE 3/5: Looks like Amazon's pre-order stock sold out right away.  If you don't want to wait for Amazon to re-stock, it looks like you can also pre-order via the U.S. distributor.

Amazon has the U.S. release of my new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science scheduled for March 22.  You can pre-order now.  The book has already been available for a few weeks at Amazon.co.uk and other European outlets.   

Some pre-publication reactions to the book:

“With characteristic clarity and panache, Feser argues that the principles of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, especially metaphysics and the philosophy of nature, are not challenged by developments in modern and contemporary science.  Indeed, Feser thinks that a proper understanding of the natural sciences discloses the enduring value of these very principles.  The book offers an excellent analysis of many of the key philosophical questions that lie at the heart of discourse about the implications of the physical and biological sciences. It is a very important resource for philosophers and scientists.”  Dr. William E. Carroll, Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars, University of Oxford

“Scientists seek explanations for why nature is the way it is.  In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Ed Feser provides explanations both for why contemporary science is the way that it is and for why modern scientists think in the way that we do. It would be a pity if scientists did not read this book. It would help them realize that their often unacknowledged philosophical assumptions and idiosyncrasies actually reveal that they are closet Aristotelians at heart.” Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., S.T.D., Professor of Biology and of Theology, Providence College, and Director, ThomisticEvolution.org

“A welcome sequel to Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics, this book argues convincingly that modern science has not overcome Aristotle's philosophy but rather presupposes it.  Feser shows that, far from being vanquished, Aristotle provides ‘the true metaphysical foundations for the very possibility of that science.’” Fr. Michael Dodds, O.P., Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California

Here are the cover copy and table of contents:

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature.  Aristotle’s Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science.  Among the many topics covered are the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; and neuroscientific reductionism.  The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0. Preface

1. Two philosophies of nature

1.1 What is the philosophy of nature?

1.2 Aristotelian philosophy of nature in outline
1.2.1 Actuality and potentiality
1.2.2 Hylemorphism
1.2.3 Limitation and change
1.2.4 Efficient and final causality
1.2.5 Living substances
1.3 The mechanical world picture
1.3.1 Key elements of the mechanical philosophy
1.3.2 Main arguments for the mechanical philosophy

2. The scientist and scientific method

2.1 The arch of knowledge and its “empiriometric” core

2.2 The intelligibility of nature
2.3 Subjects of experience
2.4 Being in the world
2.4.1 Embodied cognition
2.4.2 Embodied perception
2.4.3 The scientist as social animal
2.5 Intentionality
2.6 Connections to the world
2.7 Aristotelianism begins at home

3. Science and reality

3.1 Verificationism and falsificationism

3.2 Epistemic structural realism
3.2.1 Scientific realism
3.2.2 Structure
3.2.3 Epistemic not ontic
3.3 How the laws of nature lie (or at least engage in mental reservation)
3.4 The hollow universe 

4. Space, time, and motion

4.1 Space

4.1.1 Does physics capture all there is to space?
4.1.2 Abstract not absolute
4.1.3 The continuum
4.2 Motion
4.2.1 How many kinds of motion are there?
4.2.2 Absolute and relative motion
4.2.3 Inertia
4.2.3.1 Aristotle versus Newton?
4.2.3.2 Why the conflict is illusory
4.2.3.3 Is inertia real?
4.2.3.4 Change and inertia
4.3 Time
4.3.1 What is time?
4.3.2 The ineliminability of tense
4.3.2.1 Time and language
4.3.2.2 Time and experience
4.3.3 Aristotle versus Einstein?
4.3.3.1 Making a metaphysics of method
4.3.3.2 Relativity and the A-theory
4.3.4 Against the spatialization of time
4.3.5 The metaphysical impossibility of time travel
4.3.6 In defense of presentism
4.3.7 Physics and the funhouse mirror of nature

5. The philosophy of matter

5.1 Does physics capture all there is to matter?

5.2 Aristotle and quantum mechanics
5.2.1 Quantum hylemorphism
5.2.2 Quantum mechanics and causality
5.3 Chemistry and reductionism
5.4 Primary and secondary qualities
5.5 Is computation intrinsic to physics?
5.5.1 The computational paradigm
5.5.2 Searle’s critique
5.5.3 Aristotle and computationalism

6. Animate nature

6.1 Against biological reductionism

6.1.1 What is life?
6.1.2 Genetic reductionism
6.1.3 Function and teleology
6.1.4 The hierarchy of life forms
6.2 Aristotle and evolution
6.2.1 Species essentialism
6.2.2 Natural selection is teleological
6.2.3 Transformism
6.2.4 Problems with some versions of “Intelligent Design” theory
6.3 Against neurobabble