The Perpetual Motion Machine of Mark Antony Zimara

ZIMARA was a student and critic of ARISTOTLE and of the Aristotelian Saint ALBERTUS MAGNUS, whose work on physics and metaphysics ZIMARA published from Venice in 1518. He had previously published (in 1505) Qucestio de movente et motu and Qucestio de principio individuationis. His particular interest, however, seems to have lain not so much in ARISTOTLE and the Albertine interpretation as in the Arabian development of ARISTOTLE'S philosophy and physic. He edited the works of the French Averroist of the fourteenth century, JOHN OF JANDUN. And although ZIMARA professed to be purely an objective commentator of AVERROiS, yet it is easy to discover his own sympathy for the Averroistic philosophy. He wrote, for example, Contradictiones in dictis Aristotelis et Averrois, generally thought to be his principal work, and in this book his leaning toward the Arabian philosopher is quite patent. This work is said to have been published first from Venice in 1564; this would be some thirty or forty years after its author's death, but the publication may have been undertaken by his son, THEOPHILUS ZIMARA, who himself published a Latin commentary upon ARISTOTLE'S De Anima from Venice in 1558. As a physician ZIMARA appears to have possessed a more than ordinary knowledge of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. Moreover, he was familiar with the writings of PLATO, XENOPHON, PTOLEMY, PLINY, TERTULLIAN,