Material souls and imagination in Late Aristotelian embryology

Summary

This article explores some continuities between Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. In particular, it argues that there is an interesting consilience between some accounts of the role of imagination in trait acquisition in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian embryology. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the extensive biological writings of the Padua-based philosopher and physician, Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657). Like the Cartesian physiologists, Liceti believed that animal souls are material beings and that acts of imagination result in material images that can be transmitted by means of medical spirits to the embryo. Moreover, while the Cartesian embryologists accepted such a view in a quite speculative way, one finds penetrating criticism of imagination theories of trait acquisition in the Late Aristotelian tradition. Evidence for this thesis is presented using the no less extensive biological writings of Liceti's contemporary, Emilio Parisano (1567–1643). In conclusion, the Late Aristotelian tradition itself provides the theoretical tools for excising immaterial formative forces from embryology and at the same time evinces a much more acute sense for the problems inherent in imagination theories of trait acquisition than the Cartesian tradition.

Notes

³J.E.H. Smith (note 1), 86.

¹Justin E.H. Smith, ‘Imagination and the Problem of Heredity in Mechanist Embryology’, in The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Justin E.H. Smith (Cambridge, 2006), 80–99 (81).

²For overviews of the history of this idea, see Massimo Angelini, ‘Il potere plastico dell'immaginazione nelle gestanti tra XVI e XVIII secolo. La fortuna di un'idea’, Intersezioni 14 (1994), 53–69; Massimo Angelini, ‘Voglie materne e teratogenesi: la storia di un'idea’, in La cura delle malattie, edited by A. Guerci (Genova, 1998), 114–24. On the influence of the idea on popular culture, see Claudia Pancino, Voglie materne. Storia di una credenza (Bologna, 1996); Claudia Pancino, ‘La croyance aux envies maternelles entre culture savante et culture populaire’, Ethnologie francaise, 27 (1997), 154–62; Concetta Pennuto, Simpatia, fantasia e contagio. Il pensiero medico e il pensiero filosofico di Girolamo Fracastoro (Rome, 2008), 368–78.

⁴Descartes, Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium (Amsterdam, 1701), 11.

⁵J.E.H. Smith (note 1), 93–96. See See Descartes, La dioptrique (Paris, 1637), Sixth Discourse; L'homme, in Rene Descartes, Le monde, L'homme, ed. Annie Bitbol-Hesperies and Jean-Pierre Verdet (Paris, 1996), 152ff.; Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Philosophia naturalis (Amsterdam, 1654), 300; Malebranche, De la recherce de la verite, bk. II, pt. I, ch. 7, Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, edited by Genevieve Rodis-Lewis (Paris, 1962), 1:242.

⁶Malebranche (note 5), 243.

⁷Smith (note 1), 91.

⁸For bio-bibliographical informations on Liceti, see Charles H. Lohr, ‘Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors L-M’, Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978), 532–603 (540–41). Some of Liceti's still extant manuscripts have been studied by Lucia Rossetti, ‘L'ultima opera di Fortunio Liceti in un manoscritto inedito della biblioteca del Seminario Vescovile di Padova’, Studia patavina 5 (1958), 145–51; Gian Luigi Bruzzone, ‘Sei lettere di Fortunio Liceti al P. Angelico Aprosio (1646–1653), Quaderni per la storia dell'Universita di Padova 37 (2004), 165–73.

⁹See Fortunio Liceti, De monstrorum causis, natura et differentiis (Padua, 1616). On the role of Liceti's views in the development of early modern conceptions of monsters, see Jean Ceard, La nature et les prodiges. L'insolite au XVIe siecle, en France (Geneva, 1977), 443–54; Annie Bitbol-Hesperies, ‘Monsters, Nature, and Generation from the Renaissance to the Early Modern Period. The Emergence of Medical Thought’, in The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Justin E.H. Smith (Cambridge, 2006), 47–62 (56–57).

¹⁰Victor Zoubov, ‘Une theorie aristotelicienne de la lumiere du XVIIe siecle’, Isis 24 (1936), pp. 343–60.

¹¹Victor Zoubov, ‘Une theorie aristotelicienne de la lumiere du XVIIe siecle’, Isis 24 (1936), p. 347.

¹²However, an overview of Liceti's biological writings is given in Guiseppe Ongaro, ‘La generazione e il ‘moto’ del sangue nel pensiero di F. Liceti’, Castalia 20 (1964), 75–94. Ongaro writes: ‘The commitment of Liceti to the Aristotelian theory of generation and development is almost unconditional and total’ (p. 80). Apparently, Ongaro seems to have been unanware of Liceti's conciliatory approach to natural philosophy.

¹³Gassendi to Thomas Feyens, 6 June 1629, in Gassendi, Opera omnia (Lyon, 1658), vol. 6, 19. On Gassendi's dualist conception of the human soul, see Emily Michael and Fred S. Michael, ‘Gassendi on Sensation and Reflection: A Non-Cartesian Dualism’, History of European Ideas 9 (1988), 583–95; Saul Fisher, ‘The Soul as Vehicle for Genetic Information. Gassendi's Account of Inheritance’, in The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Justin E.H. Smith (Cambridge, 2006), 103–23.

¹⁴Saul Fisher, ‘Gassendi's Atomist Account of Generation and Heredity in Plants and Animals’, Perspectives on Science 11 (2003), 484–512 (498, note 31). Similar views as to the novelty of Gassendi's conception of the soul are expressed in Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensee fancaise au XVIII siecle (Paris, 1963), 126–31, and Peter Bowler, Preformation and Pre-existence in the Seventeenth Century: A Brief Analysis’, Journal of the History of Biology 4 (1971), 221–44 (228).

¹⁵See De gen. an. II, 3, 736b27–29.

¹⁶Liceti, De ortu animae humanae (Genova, 1602) [henceforth: OAH], 300: ‘Intellectus non est forma totius naturae humanae, sed pars talis formae, quae est anima humana, compositam naturam habens ex Intellectu, vegetali anima, & sentiente …’

¹⁷OAH, 301: ‘potior humanae animae pars intellectiva sit non educta de sinu materiae, sed creata ex nihilo, & immortalis …’

¹⁸OAH, 301: ‘Mihi autem homo est corpus naturale, ac materiale; naturalibus proinde ex materia passionibus, generationi, mortique obnoxius; eiusdem anima ideo ex materia genita, & mortalis …’ For Aristotle's account of the role of vegetative and sensitve souls in biological reproducation, see De gen. an. II, 2–5.

¹⁹Dennis Des Chene, Life's Form. Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul (Ithaca and London, 2002), 191. The slogan goes at least back to Augustine, De immortalitate 1c16.

²⁰Des Chene (note 19), 192.

²⁶ACC, 12–13: ‘[N]utricatio proprie conversio est alimenti in substantiam viventis, atque animati [De an. II, 4], eo quia quod alitur adiuncto sibi alimento disposito propriam animam communicat in formam vivificam; si ergo singulae plantarum partes aluntur, ut sanxit Aristoteles [De gen. et corr. I, 35] …; constare cuique debet in singulis plantarum partibus animam reipsa, & vitam inesse, quae alimento per nutricationem communicatur …’

²¹Liceti refers the reader to Aristotle, Phys., 7, 10–12; 8, 33; De an., 2, 3; 2, 24; 2, 47.

²²Fortunio Liceti, De animarum coextensione corpori libri duo (Padua, 1616) [henceforth: ACC], 12. See De an. II, 4.

²³ACC, 24.

²⁴ACC, 56. Liceti refers the reader to Aristotle, Phys. II, 27 and 38. The only context in which Liceti's biological writings make use of the concept of final causes is the view that the final cause of biological reproduction is the perpetuation of biological species and genera; see Fortunio Liceti, De perfecta constitutione hominis in utero (Padua, 1616) [henceforth: PCH], 117; Fortunio Liceti, De monstrorum causis, natura, & differentiis (Padua, 1616) [henceforth: MC], 33.

²⁵See De an. II, 4, 416b9–20.

²⁷ACC, 13–14.

²⁸ACC, 14: ‘versio maioris alimenti in substantiam corporis animati’. See Aristotle, De an. II, 4; PA II, 4.

²⁹ACC, 14: ‘versio maioris alimenti in substantiam corporis animati’. See Aristotle, De an. II, 4; PA II, 4: ‘Deinceps quum augmentum Aristoteli sic fieri dicatur secundum formam cuiuscumque particulae animantis, quia praeexistens anima in quantulamcumque partem corporis viventis adiuncto sibi alimento, quatenus est substantia quanta, & molis amplioris, quam hactenus effluxa e corpore, seu ab interno calore, seu ab externis caussis, consumpta, semetipsam communicat in formam vivificam, quasi se se extendens in omnem dimensionem’. See Aristotle, De gen. et. corr. I, 35.

³¹ACC, 15: ‘[T]enuissimi stirpium pulveres sub atomorum forma per aera volitantes, si alicubi plures in unum cogantur, & subditam materiam aptam nanciscantur, nullo negocio plantas passim vel intra lapidum, domorumque rimas generare visuntur …’

³⁰ACC, 14–15.

³²ACC, 16: ‘anima definiatur esse actus primus corporis naturalis instrumentalis’. See Aristotle, De an. II, 7.

³³ACC, 16: ‘anima definiatur esse actus primus corporis naturalis instrumentalis’. See Aristotle, De an. II, 7: ‘Aristoteleo monitu sunt instrumenta deservientia vegetali animae ad nutricationem, augmentum, generationem, aliasque functiones vitae obeundas [De an . II, 6]; at instrumentum nihil operari potest nisi actum, rectumque ab agente principali; agi autem, regique ab eo non valet nisi praesente atque attingente …’

³⁴ACC, 36.

³⁵ACC, 36: ‘[S]ensitricem gubernantem coextensam esse vegetali animae gubernatae inde apertissime colligas, quia gubernatio physica fit per contactum, & contiguitatem: Aristoteles enim alicubi sanxit necessarium esse mundum hunc inferiorem contiguum extare supernis lationibus, ut omnis huius mundi virtus gubernetur inde [Meteor. I, 2]’.

³⁶See Hippocrates, Liber de foetuum formatione, ch. 1; De morbis, IV; Avicenna, Fen 21, tract 1, ch. 8.

³⁷See De gen. an. I, 15–16.

³⁸See Girolamo Cardano, Contradicentia Medicorum, Opera omnia (Lyon, 1663), vol. 6, 644.

³⁹PCH, 19: ‘alimenti ultimi redundantis nutricatui singularum partium’. The theory of cambium, in turn, derives from Aristotle, De gen. an. I, 17–21.

⁴⁰PCH, 19: ‘alimenti ultimi redundantis nutricatui singularum partium’. The theory of cambium, in turn, derives from Aristotle, De gen. an. I, 17–21.

⁴¹PCH, 19: ‘alimenti ultimi redundantis nutricatui singularum partium’. The theory of cambium, in turn, derives from Aristotle, De gen. an. I, 17–21: ‘[I]bi enim primum actione testium omnia illa temperamenta partialia cunctorum membrorum temperaturis similes in unam temperiem similem temperaturae totius corporis ex illis membris constituti apta mistione adeo convertuntur, ut quae prius multa miscibilia erant in vasis praeparantibus ante testes degentibus invicem solummodo confusas, sed natura distinctas adhuc proprias formas, atque temperies obtinentia, veluti grana triticea, & hordeacea in acervo, virtute, actioneque testium in unum perfectum mistum commutentur, novo ex illis prioribus simul coniunctis facto & uno totius seminis temperamento’.

⁴²PCH, 19: ‘alimenti ultimi redundantis nutricatui singularum partium’. The theory of cambium, in turn, derives from Aristotle, De gen. an. I, 17–21: ‘[I]bi enim primum actione testium omnia illa temperamenta partialia cunctorum membrorum temperaturis similes in unam temperiem similem temperaturae totius corporis ex illis membris constituti apta mistione adeo convertuntur, ut quae prius multa miscibilia erant in vasis praeparantibus ante testes degentibus invicem solummodo confusas, sed natura distinctas adhuc proprias formas, atque temperies obtinentia, veluti grana triticea, & hordeacea in acervo, virtute, actioneque testium in unum perfectum mistum commutentur, novo ex illis prioribus simul coniunctis facto & uno totius seminis temperamento’: ‘[U]lteriori testium actione semen ita dispositum formam seminis ultimam, & specificam adipiscitur; animam nempe vegetalem, ac sensitricem …’

⁴³See De gen. an. II, 3.

⁴⁴PCH, 71–72: ‘[A]gens adaequatum est ex utriusque seminis parte spirituosa constitutum, sic agentia partialia sunt feminei seminis anima, & masculei …’

⁴⁵See De gen. an. I, 17–21.

⁴⁶OAH, 329: ‘[F]ructus, dum arbori haerent, eiusdem animae beneficio vivunt, qua & arbor ipsa vivere dicitur, quae arboris anima postmodum plurificatur, dividiturque ad subiecti divisionem … Ita prorsum arbitror semen in corpore patris eadem anima potiri, quae & pater ipse fruitur; quam dividi, ac plurificari censeo ad subiecti divisionem, dum semen a patris corpore seiungitur …’

⁴⁷PCH, 35: ‘[U]triusque seminis ut duo corpora in unam materiam apte coniungunt; ita plane duae materiales animae in unam animam nullo negotio coeunt …’

⁴⁸PCH, 35–36: ‘At vero compertissimum id habemus in arborum insitione; qua constat ex anima trunci, & anima taleae plerumque diversae speciei, coniunctis corporibus, tertiam animam consurgere omnium illarum in se facultates habentem …’

⁴⁹PCH, 38: ‘heterogenea disgregare, ac vicissim homogenea congregare’.

⁵⁰PCH, 39.

⁵¹PCH, 39.

⁵²PCH, 24: ‘[Q]uod aliunde provenire nequit nisi quia portio materiei, ex qua illae partes determinatae in filiis generantur, ortum habuit ex eo alimento, quod prius assimilatum morbosis membris eiusdem generis in corpore paterno, maternove, illorum nutricatui superabundavit; quorum non solum temperaturam essentialem, sed etiam accidentalem seu dispositionem, seu habitum morbosum transtulit in filiorum membra consimilia’.

⁵³Thomas Feyens, De viribus imaginationis tractatus (Louvain, 1608), 124–25.

⁵⁴Thomas Feyens, De viribus imaginationis tractatus (Louvain, 1608), 144–45. On Feyens’ biological views and their context, see L.J. Rather, ‘Thomas Fienus’ (1567–1631) Dialectical Investigation of the Imagination as Cause and Cure of Bodily Disease’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 41 (1967), 349–67; Jan Papy, ‘The Attitude towards Aristotelian Biological Thought in the Louvain Medical Treatises during the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century: The Case of Embryology’, in Aristotle's Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Carlos Steel et al. (Louvain, 1999), 317–37.

⁵⁸MC, 16–17: ‘[E]rror naturae in monstri procreatione consistit post animationem materiae in eius organizatione; siquidem natura generans animantia nostratia in subditum sibi materiam, praeter animam, quae substantialis forma nuncupatur, miram accidentalem construit formam, quae multiplicem membrorum variorum structuram, nexu, figuram, molemque complectitur’.

⁵⁵MC, 16.

⁵⁶MC, 16.

⁵⁷MC, 16: ‘Caeterum specifica, & proxima monstrorum forma … nulla est alia quam mala corporis constitutio, deformisque membrorum organizatio, & omnino vitiata partium conformatio’.

⁵⁹Norma Emerton, The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form (Ithaca, NY, 1984).

⁶⁰MC, 79: ‘alicuius membri figuram distorquere, atque a naturali constitutione turpiter variare, quam partis alicuius aut magnitudinem adaugere, aut numerum geminare, aut situm permutare … ’

⁶¹PCH, 96.

⁶²MC, 97.

⁶³MC, 97.

⁶⁵PCH, 97–98: ‘[P]hantasiae instrumenta vehiculo spirituum ea ratione transferuntur, ut sensus exterior mediante imagine obiecti a se cogniti sibi impressa consimilem procreet in ea spirituum parte, quam contingit, & haec in aliam successive usque ad organum sensus interioris … ’

⁶⁴On Renaissance of theories of sensible and intelligible species, see Leen Spruit, Species intelligibilis. From Perception to Knowledge. Vol. 2: Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy (Leiden, 1995).

⁶⁶PCH, 99: ‘Sic penitus a parentum phantasia vehementem rei alicuius imaginem obtinente in tota sprituum substantia, quae universum illorum corpus omniquaeque permeat, consimilis procreatur imago … ’

⁶⁷PCH, 98: ‘quousque perventum sit ad spirituosam seminis substantiam, atque ad embryonem’.

⁶⁸Emilio Parisano, Nobilium exercitationum de subtilitate pars altera (Venice, 1635) [henceforth: NES], 68: ‘Etenim vix hominem tam brevi illo temporis spatio in quo bestiae illa voluptas a se amotam ad se se allicit ac rapit consulto & omni dedita opera duos viros fixe … imaginari posse credimus, nedum bestias imminutae imaginationis & brutino illo furori prorsus deditas’.

⁶⁹NES, 69.

⁷⁰NES, 69: ‘[I]mpressiones fiunt in partibus efformatis, bene dispositis, atque actu talibus bene existentibus … ’

⁷¹NES, 68: ‘An pictrix ista imaginatio istos colores in promptu illico in pera, in pixide habet?’

⁷²NES, 281: ‘Quod ipsi in capite, rerum non existentium conceptus, earumque colores tunc non existentes, figuram, formam, proprietates accipient, in uterum, in semenque deferant, nec mente assequor, nec capiam unquam’.

⁷³NES, 285: ‘[P]er opticum ad cerebrum tendet, illinc per nervum sextae coniugationis ad iecur. At nervus sextae coniugationis non ad internam partem iecoris, sed ad membranam ipsum ambientis tendit & ibi desinit. Quo modo ergo vapor illuc perventus ad cutim faetus tendet? … Dices tendet vapor ab oculis per arterias & venas … Sed vapor sive ab olfactu, sive a visu ad iecur tendat mediante spiritu & sanguine, cur ad iecur, non ad cor & cerebrum?’

⁷⁴NES, 285: ‘[P]er opticum ad cerebrum tendet, illinc per nervum sextae coniugationis ad iecur. At nervus sextae coniugationis non ad internam partem iecoris, sed ad membranam ipsum ambientis tendit & ibi desinit. Quo modo ergo vapor illuc perventus ad cutim faetus tendet? … Dices tendet vapor ab oculis per arterias & venas … Sed vapor sive ab olfactu, sive a visu ad iecur tendat mediante spiritu & sanguine, cur ad iecur, non ad cor & cerebrum?’: ‘[E]tiamsi suscipere possunt, quia in itinere alterentur absumeruntur … species illae pluries perirent. Praeterquam quod vapores se se conservantes sua, formam, qualitates, proprietatesque suas retinerent non alienas …’

⁷⁵NES, 280: ‘Purae nugae sunt, quod matris imaginatrix in uteri vacuum descendat …’

⁷⁶On the innovative nature of early modern Aristotelianism, see Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism’, History of Science 2 (1973), 159–93; Christia Mercer, ‘The Vitality and Importance of Early Modern Aristotelianism’, in The Rise of Modern Philosophy. The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibniz, edited by Tom Sorell (Oxford, 1993), 33–67.