Jacopo Zabarella was one of the leading Aristotelians of the sixteenth century. He taught at the University of Padua for twenty-five years, from 1564 until his death. The fruit of these years of lecturing is contained in his printed works, which include treatises on Aristotelian logic and natural science. His writings in logic, and especially on scientific method, earned Zabarella a reputation as the most outstanding logician of his time; they continued to be read by school philosophers in Germany and Italy for several generations after his death and still command respect as interpretations of Aristotle.

Zabarella proceeds in characteristic scholastic fashion, examining and resolving, independently of each other, a sequence of issues. In the process he canvasses the views of an impressive number of predecessors among the Latins and seems fully conversant with Greek philosophy, including the Greek commentators on Aristotle. The doctrines discussed...