Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin: On Vegetable Souls

By: Lucas John Mix

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Synopsis: This book traces the history of life-concepts, with a focus on the vegetable souls of Aristotle, investigating how they were interpreted and eventually replaced by evolutionary biology. Philosophers have long struggled with the relationship between physics, physiology, and psychology, asking questions of organization, purpose, and agency. For two millennia, the vegetable soul, nutrition, and reproduction were commonly used to understand basic life and connect it to “higher” animal and vegetable life. Cartesian dualism and mechanism destroyed this bridge and left biology without an organizing principle until Darwin. Modern biology parallels Aristotelian vegetable life-concepts, but remains incompatible with the animal, rational, subjective, and spiritual life-concepts that developed through the centuries. Recent discoveries call for a second look at Aristotle’s ideas – though not their medieval descendants. Life remains an active, chemical process whose cause, identity, and purpose is self-perpetuation.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9783319960470
Related ISBNs:: 9783319960463
Publisher:: Springer International Publishing
Date of Addition:: 08/29/18
Copyrighted By:: The Editor
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Reference, Science, Religion and Spirituality, Philosophy, Sociology
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.