Introduction Part I

The treatise that has come down to us under the title De Motu Animalium (MA) holds a peculiar place within the Aristotelian oeuvre.1 It treats the phenomenon of animal self-motion—that animals, both human and non-human, are capable of moving themselves. Although animals do so in several different ways—e.g. by walking, flying, swimming, crawling, creeping, and hopping—there is a common cause of this movement that ...