Vegetative Powers: The Roots of Life in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Natural Philosophy

✍ Scribed by Andreas Blank and Fabrizio Baldassarri

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 470
• Category: Library

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Authors
Chapter 1: Missing a Soul That Endows Bodies with Life: An Introduction
References
Chapter 2: Soul, Parts of the Soul, and the Definition of the Vegetative Capacity in Aristotle’s De anima
2.1 What Is the Soul for Aristotle?
2.2 What Is a Part of the Soul?
2.3 The Vegetative Part of the Soul
References
Chapter 3: Embodied Intelligent (?) Souls: Plants in Plato’s Timaeus
3.1 The Limits of Degenerative Creation
3.2 The Puzzle Arising: Must Sensation Imply Intelligence?
3.3 Option 3: Equivocation
3.4 Option 2: Minimisation
3.5 Option 1: Biting the Bullet
3.6 A Suggested Solution
References
Chapter 4: The Vegetative Soul in Galen
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Galen’s Tripartition of the Soul
4.3 Galen’s Adaptation of the Desiderative Soul
4.4 The Desiderative Soul as the Soul of Plants
4.5 The Human Being as a Plant
4.6 The Creative Power of the Vegetative Soul?
References
Chapter 5: Avicenna on Vegetative Faculties and the Life of Plants
5.1 Arguments for Enumeration and Distinction of the Vegetative Faculties
5.2 Plants and Souls
5.3 The Ennobling of the Vegetative by Higher Faculties
5.4 Metaphysical and Temporal Priority Among Faculties
5.5 The Dividing Line: Plant-Like Animals and Voluntary Motion
5.6 Reproduction in Avicenna’s General Biological Works
5.7 Avicenna’s Book of Plants and the Concept of Life
References
Chapter 6: Can Plants Desire? Aspects of the Debate on desiderium naturale
6.1 The Pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis on Desire in Plants and the Perspective of Ancient Sources
6.2 Plotinus and the Contemplation of Plants
6.3 Isaac Israeli on the Sensus Naturalis
6.4 Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics
6.5 Plants’ Desire by Roger Bacon
6.6 Albert the Great’s Summary of the Question
6.7 Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 7: Disclosing the Hidden Life of Plants. Theories of the Vegetative Soul in Albert the Great’s De vegetabilibus et plantis
7.1 A Simple Soul in a Simple Body
7.1.1 Theories of Plant Perception
7.1.2 Do Plants Sleep?
7.1.3 Male and Female Plants?
7.2 Disclosing the Physiology of Plants
7.2.1 Plant Development
7.2.2 Roots and Marrow
7.2.3 Nutrition and Death: The Role of Pores
7.3 Before and After Albert’s De vegetabilibus: Alfred of Sareshel and Peter of Auvergne
7.4 A Botany Not for Science’s Sake
7.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: On the Natural Generation of Human Beings: The Vegetative Power in a Thought Experiment by Some Masters of Arts (1250-c. 1268)
8.1 Historical and Theoretical Context
8.2 The Thought Experiment of the Progenitum A. Examination of the Texts
8.2.1 The Shorter Version of the Experiment: John de Sècheville, De Principiis Naturae
8.2.2 The Earliest Version of the Experiment: Quaestiones super Librum de Anima, q. 60
8.2.3 The Last Version of the Experiment: Ps.-Petrus Guentin de Ortemberg, Quaestiones super Physicam II, 1
8.3 Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 9: Thomas Aquinas on the Vegetative Soul
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Why Is There a Need for a Vegetative Soul?
9.3 The Functions of the Vegetative Soul
9.4 The Vegetative Powers in Human Beings
9.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: The Vegetative Powers of Human Beings: Late Medieval Metaphysical Worries
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Where Should the Vegetative Powers Be Placed in Human Beings?
10.2.1 The Soul as Distinct from Its Powers
10.2.2 Soul(s) and Powers: Identical Yet Distinct
10.3 The Metaphysics of Generation, Nutrition, and Growth
10.3.1 How to Produce a Human Being?
10.3.2 How Is Food Digested?
10.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: The Jesuit Cultivation of Vegetative Souls: Leonard Lessius (1554–1623) on a Sober Diet
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Jesuits and Galenism
11.3 The Hygiasticon
11.4 The Characteristics of Diet
11.5 The Virtue of Nutrition as a Foundation for Rational and Spiritual Functions
11.6 Luigi Cornaro’s Idea of Diet and Temperance
11.7 Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Nicolaus Taurellus on Vegetative Powers and the Question of Substance Monism
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Vegetative Powers and the Problem of Substance Monism
12.3 Elements and the Question of Substantiality
12.4 Vegetative Powers and the Emergence of Substantial Forms
12.5 Vegetative Powers and Substance Pluralism
12.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 13: Vegetal Analogy in Early Modern Medicine: Generation as Plant Cutting in Sennert’s Early Treatises (1611–1619)
13.1 Introduction
13.2 The Transmission of the Soul During Generation
13.3 Multiplication of Forms and Horticulture
13.4 Forms, Seeds, and “Stars”: A Paracelsian Reconnection
13.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 14: Vegetative and Sensitive Functions of the Soul in Descartes’s Meditations
14.1 Introduction
14.2 The Pre-philosophical Notion of Man
14.3 Abstraction and Functions of the Soul
14.4 What Is “Necessarily True”
14.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 15: Failures of Mechanization: Vegetative Powers and the Early Cartesians, Regius, La Forge, and Schuyl
15.1 Nutrition, Digestion and Growth in L’Homme
15.2 Descartes’ Vegetative Power as Immutatio
15.3 Three Steps beyond Descartes: Regius’ Vegetative Power
15.4 Two Problems Within Descartes: La Forge’s Remarks
15.5 Florent Schuyl: Plants and Vegetative Activities in De Homine (1662)
15.6 Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 16: Marin Cureau de la Chambre on the Vegetative Powers
16.1 Introduction
16.2 On That Secret and Hidden Cognition: Instincts
16.3 The Nature of Vegetative Cognition
16.4 The Shadow of Cognition in the Inanimate World
16.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 17: Re-inventing the Vegetable Soul? More’s Spirit of Nature and Cudworth’s Plastic Nature Reconsidered
17.1 Context: The Challenge of Mechanism
17.2 Two Hypotheses
17.3 The Plant Life of Nature
17.4 Sources
17.4.1 Sources: More
17.4.2 Sources: Cudworth
17.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 18: Margaret Cavendish and Vegetable Life
18.1 Introduction
18.2 Galenic Matter and Knowledge
18.3 William Harvey and Vegetable Rationality
18.4 Redefining Plant Life
18.5 Generation and Growth
18.6 Perception and Patterning
18.7 Conclusion
References
Chapter 19: Plantanimal Imagination: Life and Perception in Early Modern Discussions of Vegetative Power
19.1 A Plant’s-Eye View of the Universe: Plotinus and Ficino
19.2 The Inner Touch of the Vegetative Soul: Galen and Cesalpino
19.3 Perception as the Pulse of Undifferentiated Matter: Harvey
19.4 The Vegetative Imagination of the Earth: Kepler
19.5 Conclusion
References
Chapter 20: “Vegetative Epistemology”: Francis Glisson on the Self-Referential Nature of Life
20.1 Perceptions and Vegetative Life
20.2 Arnauld and Glisson on Self-Referentiality
20.3 Glisson on Sensory Awareness
20.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 21: Life in the Dark: Corals, Sponges, and Gravitation in Late Seventeenth Natural Philosophy
21.1 Introduction
21.2 Nehemiah Grew’s Natural History
21.3 Nehemiah Grew’s Physico-Theology
21.4 Life Is Everywhere… and Nowhere?
21.5 A Brief Comparison with John Ray and Ralph Cudworth
21.6 Conclusion
References
Chapter 22: Vegetable Life: Applications, Implications, and Transformations of a Classical Concept (1500–1700)
22.1 Vegetable Analogies
22.2 Vegetal Anatomies
22.3 The Vegetable in Generation and Reproduction
22.4 Vegetative Soul and Sexual Drive
22.5 Vegetable Machines
22.6 Vegetable and Animal Together: Organisms
22.7 “The Plant-Man”
References
Chapter 23: The Notion of Vegetative Soul in the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy
23.1 Stahl’s Critical Stance About the Vegetative Soul
23.2 Leibniz’s Interpretation of the Vegetative Soul
23.3 Conclusion
References
Chapter 24: Vegetation and Life from Wolff to Hanov
24.1 The Mechanical Life of Plants
24.2 Biology and the System of Sciences
24.3 Organic Bodies
24.4 Vegetative Force and Vegetative Soul
24.5 Natural Instinct and Biological Laws
References
Chapter 25: Bichatʼs Two Lives
25.1 The Difference of Two Lives, or How One Life Becomes Two Lives
25.2 Forms of Interaction, or How Two Lives Become One Life
25.3 Concluding Remarks
References