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Title Vegetative powers : the roots of life in Ancient, Medieval and Early modern natural philosophy / Fabrizio Baldassarri, Andreas Blank, editors
Published Cham : Springer, 2021

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Description 1 online resource (xx, 459 pages) : illustrations
Series International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 0066-6610 ; 234
Archives internationales d'histoire des idées ; 234. 0066-6610
Contents 1. Introduction: Missing a Soul that Endows Bodies with Life -- 2. Souls, Parts of Soul, and Vegetation in Aristotle -- 3. The Vegetative Soul in the Neoplatonic Tradition -- 4. Galenic Anatomo-Physiology of the Vegetative Soul -- 5. Expanding the Parva Naturalia-Project: Albertus Magnus on nutrition -- 6. How to Explain Vegetative Functions of an Immaterial Soul? -- 7. Jesuit Vegetative Souls: Lessius and the Conimbricenses on men lowest functions -- 8. Towards the Elimination of the Anima Vegetativa: Some Intellectualistic Tendencies in the Jesuits Suárez and Arriaga -- 9. Daniel Sennert on the Vegetative Soul and its Powers -- 10. Nicolaus Taurellus on Forms, Vegetative Souls and the Question of Emergence -- 11. Generation and the Vegetative Soul: A Hermetic Perspective from Marburg (1612) -- 12. The Galenic soul in the Renaissance -- 13. Anatomy and faculties of the soul in Servetus and Columbus -- 14. The Matter of Life. Theories of Spontaneous Generation in the Late Sixteenth-Century Italy -- 15. Van Helmont's theory of digestion and nutrition -- 16. Concoction, Transmutation, and Living Spirits: Francis Bacon's Experiments with Artificial Life -- 17. The Vegetative Functions of the Soul in Descartes' Meditations -- 18. (Failed) Ontological Revolutions. The Vegetative Soul in Guy de La Brosse, René Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi -- 19. Marin Cureau de la Chambre Conception of the Vegetative Soul -- 20. Scholastic Cartesianism. Juan Caramuel and the Negation of the Vegetative Soul in his Cartesian Manuscript -- 21. Cartesianising Vegetative Souls: Hylarchic Principles and Plastic Natures in More and Cudworth -- 22. Re-Inventing the Vegetable Soul? More Spirit of Nature and Cudworth's Plastic Nature Reconsidered -- 23. Vegetative Epistemology: the Cognitive Principles of Life in William Harvey and Francis Glisson -- 24. Plants and Brains: The Vegetative Soul and Its Links with the Imagination in Early Modern Medicine and Philosophy -- 25. The Vegetative Soul in Glisson's Natural Philosophy -- 26. Life as Vegetation. Limiting Cases and Theological Problems for Seventeenth-century Thinkers -- 27. An Alternative to the Vegetative Soul: Galen's Natural Spirit in the Late 17th-Century Medical Conception of Digestive Functions -- 28. The Notion of Vegetative Soul in the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy -- 29. Newton's 'vegetative Spirit' -- 30. Beyond Structure: Vegetative Powers from Wolff to Hanov -- 31. The Role of Vegetative Powers in Animal Physiologies: Bichat's Order of Two Lives
Summary The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. Unearthing the history of the vegetative soul as a shrub of interconnected concepts, the 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed June 2, 2021)
Subject Plants (Philosophy)
Plants (Philosophy)
Form Electronic book
Author Baldassarri, Fabrizio, editor.
Blank, Andreas, editor.
ISBN 9783030697099
3030697096