Talk:Aristotle's Masterpiece

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Description of authorship[edit]

I copied this discussion from User talk:Sirmylesnagopaleentheda and User talk:AlexanderVanLoon. --AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 14:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed you changed a line I had added to the article Aristotle's Masterpiece. Specifically, you changed the following line:

As a consequence it is now recognized that a Pseudo-Aristotle was the author.

to:

As a consequence the unknown author is described as "Pseudo-Aristotle".

Possibly you did not read the article on Pseudo-Aristotle? The name is used to refer to all authors who falsely claimed to be Aristotle. A quick search on Google Scholar shows that describing an author as "a Pseudo-Aristotle" is quite common in scientific publications. Would you agree with undoing your edit? I'll assume you'll agree if I haven't heard from you in three days. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlexanderVanLoon (talk • contribs) 14:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did follow the link to Pseudo-Aristotle, but not all readers will do so.

The danger I saw in the old wording was that a reader would think there was an identified Pseudo-Aristotle or a small class of them, and that the article was giving positive information by attributing the work to him or them. In other words, saying "this is by Pseudo-Aristotle" suggests not only "this is not by Aristotle" but also an attempt to answer "if Aristotle did not write it, who did?".

In particular, it might make the reader class the work with more ancient pseudo-Aristotelian material such as the De Caelo or the De Plantis, which have at least some tenuous claim to form part of the Aristotelian corpus; like attributing a painting to "school of...".

In an ideal world I would leave the article saying simply "it was certainly not by Aristotle, but by someone in Renaissance times or later", and mention "Pseudo-Aristotle" only in the list of references at the end. Failing that, something like "certainly not by Aristotle, and must therefore be allotted to the class of Pseudo-Aristotelian works". But I regard even that as unnecessary and tautologous. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 17:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that I shouldn't have assumed that every reader will follow the wikilink to Pseudo-Aristotle. However, I'm uncomfortable with referring to him with the definite article "the" instead of the indefinite "a" because the latter indicates a group of unknown authors and former indicates a single known person. The article already mentioned it was first published in 1684, which prevents people from associating this work with Pseudo-Aristotelian works of classical antiquity. To resolve both our issues, I have just edited the article to have the relevant sentences read as follows:

It was first published in 1684 and written by an unknown author who falsely claimed to be Aristotle. As a consequence the author is now described as a Pseudo-Aristotle, the collective name for unidentified authors who masqueraded as Aristotle.

Possibly you may still consider this to be tautologous, but it is the lesser evil as it now explains to the readers what is meant with Pseudo-Aristotle (and therefore solves your/our first problem). Is this change acceptable to you? I think this is a good compromise. I'll copy our discussion to the talk page of the article so others can find it easily. --AlexanderVanLoon (talk) 14:07, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would find it easier to read if you said something to clarify if anything came Aristotle at all? I specifically find the comment "The first part starts with a description of the male and female sex organs in the first chapter. The second chapter advocates sexual intercourse in monogamous relationships and warns against polygamy and adultery because it is forbidden by Christian doctrine" ~ very odd as he was near 400 years before there was a Christ? Old Testament Judaism isn't the same even if RC's which I am, want to rule before their time? --111.91.234.166 (talk) 09:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]