Abstract
The term “vegetable soul” troubles the ear. The two words have such different contexts that joining them strikes us as either funny or nonsensical. The Aristotelian idea of souls as the efficient, formal, and final cause of life dominated discussions of plant life for roughly two thousand years. And yet the idea has disappeared from our vocabulary. Many authors have tackled the history of souls, emphasizing mind and self-hood, but the time is ripe for a history focusing on nutrition, reproduction, and vegetable life. Such a history provides both perspective and potential ways forward as we rediscover commonalities between human and non-human life.
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Notes
- 1.
From a twenty-first century perspective, I can object to both ends of this scale. Lichens represent a sophisticated symbiosis of fungi , algae , and cyanobacteria . No matter how we define “simple,” many simpler organisms exist. Likewise, I would object to the superiority of men over women. I might even ask how we are to define humans as superior to other multicellular organisms. I will return to these questions in part IV. As to animate life with more dignity than humans, the traditional contenders were stars , planets , and angels .
- 2.
Several philosophical schools deny that physical stuff is substantial (e.g., Idealism ). In such systems, “physical” and “natural” would take on different meanings. Here, I will not use the words in those contexts.
- 3.
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Mix, L.J. (2018). Vegetable Souls?. In: Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96047-0_1
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