This volume explores the versatility of the concept of pneuma in philosophical and medical theories in the wake of Aristotle’s physics. It offers fourteen separate studies of how the concept of pneuma was used in a range of physical, physiological, psychological, cosmological and ethical inquiries. The focus is on individual thinkers or traditions and the specific questions they sought to address, including early Peripatetic sources, the Stoics, the major Hellenistic medical traditions, Galen, as well as Proclus in Late Antiquity and (...) John Zacharias Aktouarios in the early 14th century. Building on new scholarly approaches and on recent advancements in our understanding of Graeco-Roman philosophy and medicine, the volume prompts a profound re-evaluation of this fluid and adaptable, but crucially important, substance, in antiquity and beyond. (shrink)

Duas das principais controvérsias que têm ocupado aqueles que se dedicam à teoria aris- totélica do movimento animal são a controvérsia acerca da forma da cognição através da qual um animal irracional apreende um objeto como um objeto de desejo e a controvérsia acerca da função desempenhada pela cognição na explicação aristotélica dos movimentos voluntários de locomoção animal. Neste artigo, eu apresento uma teoria acerca das formas como o desejo e a cognição se articulam na teoria aristotélica segundo a qual (...) um animal irracional apreende um objeto como um objeto de desejo através da percepção incidental deste objeto e, ao contrário do que a maioria parece acreditar, esta percepção não tem sempre a mesma função na produção destes movimentos. Se o que for dito aqui estiver correto, em alguns casos esta percepção é responsável tanto pela geração do desejo quan- to pela sua orientação, mas em outros ela é responsável apenas pela sua orientação. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of causes requires a first, unmoved mover outside the sublunary world, along with soul as first and unmoved mover in the natural world below. Aristotle separates the charmed group of causes headed by soul that are jointly sufficient for typical animal behaviour from external causes. The border between external and charmed is permeable: crops growing in the field are co-opted to become an instrument of soul that nourishes the animal. (Instruments of soul like the sumphuton pneuma are internal (...) to the animal from the start.) But no causes, not even the Unmoved Mover, may supersede soul as unmoved mover. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Aristotle operates with a particular theoretical model in his explanation of animal locomotion, what we call the ‘centralized incoming and outgoing motions’ model. We show how the model accommodates more complex cases of animal motion and how it allows Aristotle to preserve the intuition that animals are self-movers, without jeopardizing his arguments for the eternity of motion and the necessary existence of one eternal unmoved mover in Physics VIII. The CIOM model helps to elucidate (...) Aristotle’s two central yet problematic claims, namely that the soul is the efficient cause of animal motion and that it is the internal supporting-point necessary for animal motion. Moreover, the CIOM model helps us to explain the difference between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary motions, and to square Aristotle’s cardiocentrism with his hylomorphism, but also, more generally, it provides an interesting way of thinking about the place of intentionality in the causal structure of the world. (shrink)

A lot of scholarly attention has been given to Aristotle’s account of how and why animals are capable of moving themselves. But no one has focused on the question, whether self-change is possible in plants on Aristotle’s account. I first give some context and explain why this topic is worth exploring. I then turn to Aristotle’s conditions for self-change given in Physics VIII.4, where he argues that the natural motion of the elements does not count as self-motion. I apply those (...) conditions to natural change in plants. Then I explore the reasons for and consequences of Aristotle’s argument that plants are incapable of sensation. I argue that for Aristotle plants cannot possess the directing faculties for self-change, namely, desire and phantasia. My goal is to show why growth, metabolism, and reproduction in plants would not count as self-change for Aristotle, despite many of these natural changes appearing as autonomous as the analogous changes in animals. This sheds light on how, for Aristotle, self-change differs from natural change. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s explanation for why and how birds are capable of natural flight. For Aristotle, air is a markedly different external resting point in comparison with water and earth, and nature has designed birds so as to take advantage of the unique way in which air affects the inequality between the pushing downward, that is, the downward force and the resistance. My discussion sheds some light on Aristotle’s anticipation of some aspects of modern fluid dynamics and aerodynamics.

I explain what Aristotle means when, after puzzling about the matter of motion in incomplete animals (those without sight, smell, hearing), he suggests in De Anima III 11.433b31–434a5 that just as incomplete animals are moved indeterminately, desire and phantasia are present in those animals, but present indeterminately. I argue that self-motion and its directing faculties in incomplete animals differ in degree but not in kind from those of complete animals. I examine how an object of desire differs for an incomplete (...) animal. Using a comparison with Aristotle’s account of recollection, especially in unfavorable circumstances, I describe indeterminate self-motion. Finally, I discuss implications for our understanding of Aristotle’s accounts of the faculties of the soul and incomplete animals. (shrink)

In De Anima 1.4, Aristotle asks whether the soul can be moved by its own affections. His conclusion—that to say the soul grows angry is like saying that it weaves and builds—has traditionally been read on the assumption that it is false to credit the soul with weaving and building; I argue that Aristotle’s analysis of psychological motions implies his belief that the soul does in fact weave and build.

In this paper I outline a role for mechanistic conceptions of organisms in ancient Greek natural philosophy, especially the study of organisms. By ‘mechanistic conceptions’ I mean the use of ideas and techniques drawn from the field of mechanics to investigate the natural world. ‘Mechanistic conceptions’ of organisms in ancient Greek philosophy, then, are those that draw on the ancient understanding of the field called ‘mechanics’ — hê mêchanikê technê—to investigate living things, rather than those bearing some perceived similarity to (...) modern notions of ‘the mechanical.’ I have argued elsewhere that evidence of mechanistic conceptions of the natural world can be found, not only among seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘mechanical philosophers,’ but also—albeit in vestigial form — in some ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, these reports are slight, often by detractors of this approach, and offer only clues as to the motivational context for employing these mechanical conceptions. Here, my purpose is to suggest what role they might have played in the history of natural philosophy. (shrink)

Aristotle has traditionally been cast as the arch-enemy of all things mechanistic. Given the dichotomy long thought to exist between mechanistic and teleological schools of thought, there is a satisfying irony in discovering veins of apparently ‘mechanistic’ thought within the work of the definitive teleologist. Several waves of scholarship in the past century have argued, from different angles, for mechanistic interpretations of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The present generation is no exception: in the last decade, Jean De Groot, Monte Johnson, and (...) Tiberiu Popa have variously argued that a mechanistic vein can be found in Aristotle’s work, despite his undeniable teleological credentials. This paper explores the assumptions—some of them open to question—that accompany such advocacy. It will urge some terminological refinements, and turn a skeptical lens on some aspects of these projects. Nonetheless, it will stress that they open promising lines of inquiry, avoiding some of the limitations of earlier ventures into this territory. (shrink)