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

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