Julius Rocca is Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Classical Philology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His book Galen on the Brain (2003) was awarded the 2006 Outstanding Book in the History of the Neurosciences award by the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences.

• Introduction Julius Rocca; Part I. The Socratic Foundations of Teleology: 1. Socrates, Darwin, and teleology David Sedley; Part II. Plato and the Platonic Tradition: 2. Atemporal teleology in Plato Samuel Scolnicov; 3. Teleology and names in the Platonic and Anaxagorean traditions Harold Tarrant; 4. Why doesn't the Moon crash into the Earth? Platonic and Stoic teleologies in Plutarch's Concerning the face which appears in the orb of the Moon Jan Opsomer; 5. Signs and tokens: do the gods of Neoplatonism really care? John Dillon; Part III. Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition: 6. Biology and teleology in Aristotle's account of the city Mariska Leunissen; 7. Aristotelian mechanistic explanation Monte Ransome Johnson; 8. The purpose of the natural world: Aristotle's followers and interpreters R. W. Sharples; 9. William Harvey: enigmatic Aristotelian of the seventeenth century James G. Lennox; Part IV. Teleology in Medicine: 10. Teleology in Hippocratic texts: clues to the future? Elizabeth Craik; 11. The place of disease in a teleological worldview: Plato, Aristotle, Galen Philip van der Eijk; 12. Teleology and necessity in Greek embryology R. J. Hankinson.

'This is a good collection of articles on teleology in ancient Greek philosophy and medical writing, derived from a conference held at the University of Exeter in 2009.' Jacob Rosen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews