Abstract
If we take a bird’s eye view of the course of natural history over the arc of time that extends from about the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century, we note that Aristotle’s fixist, essentialist and teleological framework substantially holds its ground. Although its paternity is gradually disowned and in a certain sense disguised; and although significant innovations are introduced into this field of enquiry, both quantitatively and qualitatively especially in the sphere of systematics; and, finally, although repeated attempts are made to import Cartesian notions into the field, the framework holds fast. Despite Aristotle’s being cited less and less, from the point of view of the three fundamental principles, at this time natural history can still legitimately be interpreted as a form of ‘Christianized Aristotelianism’:
For my part, I would argue that the systematic natural history of Tournefort, Ray, Linnaeus, and others was in many respects simply a Christianized Aristotelianism, although much narrower in scope than Aristotle’s biology. True, Ray’s world was created, Aristotle’s eternal, but in either case the species were fixed and given. Aristotle postulated final causes in nature to explain the adaptations of plants and animals, Ray a transcendent Creator; in either case nature did nothing in vain. Aristotle distinguished between essential and accidental characters in defining kinds of animals; Ray employed the same distinctions in arriving at species and constructing his systems of classification, adding, however, the novel idea that the members of each species were related by common descent.1
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Notes
See J. C. Greene (1992) ‘From Aristotle to Darwin’, cit., p. 268f.; see also pp. 275 ff.; see also
J. C. Greene (1999) ‘Reflections on Ernst Mayr’s This is Biology’, Biology and Philosophy, 14, 103–16, pp. 105–6.
See the classic C. E. Raven (1986) John Ray, naturalist: his life and works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942–1950), p. 452.
See R. Boyle A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688), in The Works of Robert Boyle (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000), vol. 11 (2), p. 128 f.: ‘And I remember that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only Discourse I had with him, (which was but a while before he dyed) What were the things that induc’d him to think to a Circulation of the Blood? He answer’d me, that when he took notice that the Valves in the Veins of so many several Parts of the Body, were so Plac’d that they gave free passage to the Blood Towards the Heart, but oppos’d the passage of the Venal Blood the Contrary way: He was invited to imagine, that so Provident a Cause as Nature had not so Plac’d so many Valves without a Design’.
An analogous line, aimed at placing Ray in the general context of nonconformity with Cartesian tendencies after the great scientific revolution, is taken, especially in relation to the question of anthropocentrism, by J. H. Brooke (2000) ‘“Wise Men Nowadays Think Otherwise”: John Ray, Natural Theology and the Meanings of Anthropocentrism’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, vol. 54, n. 2, 199–213, especially pp. 202 ff.
J. Ray The Wisdom of God, cit., pp. 141–2. On the influence of Henry More, and more particularly the second book of An Antidote against Atheism, see for example C. E. Raven (1986) John Ray, naturalist, cit., pp. 457 ff.
See for example L. Koerner (1999) Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge MT and London: Harvard University Press), p. 33: ‘Both Car Linnaeus and his friend Petrus Aredi had graduated from provincial grammar schools. In these schools, which took students as far as admission to university, they had been trained in the logic and natural philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, Linnaeus’ first Latin reading at home was the Historia animalium. (It was a gift from his father). As a boy Linnaeus encountered the same handful of texts that a Roman boy might have. […] Twelve hundred years after St. Augustine, in the eighteenth century, Linnaeus wrote that in the snowy farm villages along the Baltic shires, boys were flogged for not knowing Aristotle.’
See for example the classic J. C. Greene (1959) The Death of Adam. Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames: Iowa University Press), p. 134: ‘In his System of Vegetables Linnaeus suggested that perhaps God created only one plant of each order and then arranged intermarriages so as to form the genera, leaving nature to produce the species within each genus by further crossing. Linnaeus returned to this idea in his diary, stating that the impregnations of the original species of each genus had taken place ‘accidentally’. Though he said nothing of the time required for these developments, it is clear that he was looking or a historical explanation of the origin of genera and species and that he conceived the outcome as determined to a considerable degree by chance.’
E. Mayr (1982) The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge MT and London: Harvard University Press), pp. 258–60, insists on Linnaeus’ ‘essentialism’;
J. L. Larson (1968) ‘The Species Concept of Linnaeus’, Isis, 59, n. 3, 291–9 emphasizes the teleological intentions; on the return to the continuist Aristotelian model, see also
J. L. Larson (1967) ‘Linnaeus and the Natural Method’, Isis, 58, n. 3, 304–20, pp. 316 ff.
C. Linnaeus Nemesis Divina, ed. and trans. M. J. Petry (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).
Aristotle Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1978), I, 3, 1256b.
D. Sedley (1991) ‘Is Aristotle’s teleology anthropocentric?’, Phronesis, 36 (2), 179–196, has reasserted the ‘strongly anthropocentric’ Aristotelian attitude, by which man (humankind) is ‘the ultimate beneficiary’ of natural teleological mechanisms, insofar as he is at the top of the scale; see also
D. Sedley (2007) Creationism and Its Critics, cit., especially pp. 201–3.
See C. Limoges (1972) ‘Introduction’ in C. Linné L’Équilibre de la nature (Paris: Vrin), pp. 9–11.
W. Coleman (1964) Georges Cuvier, Zoologist. A Study in the History of Evolution Theory s(Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University press), p. 20 ff.; on the persistence of the essentialism readopted by Cesalpino see also
Ph. R. Sloan (1972) ‘John Locke, John Ray, and the Problem of the Natural System’, cit., pp. 9–13, 51–2; on the centrality of the tradition anchored in the reproductive criterion reintroduced by Cesalpino, see
G. Barsanti (1992) La scala, la mappa, l’albero, cit., especially pp. 130–1, 166.
On the centrality of the comparative anatomical physiology of Parts of Animals, see M. Vegetti (1996) ‘I fondamenti teorici della biologia aristotelica nel De partibus animalium’, cit., especially pp. 498 ff. and pp. 552 ff.
On this issue, see G. Barsanti (2005) Una lunga pazienza cieca (Torino: Einaudi), pp. 89–95, 117 ff.; for an idea of the tensions regarding discussion of the relationship between individual and species on the epistemological level, see for example G-L. L. de Buffon, ‘De la Nature. Second vue’ in Histoire naturelle, vol. XIII (1765), I-XX, pp. I ff., trans. ‘Second View’ in Buffon’s Natural History (London: Barr, 1792), pp. 343 ff.;
J. Roger (1997) Buffon. A Life in Natural History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), p. 314 f. and note 34, which underlines the continuity between Aristotle and Buffon, ‘probably’ mediated by William Harvey, as well as the definition of the concept of ‘species’ in reproductive terms.
See G. L. L. de Buffon ‘Premier discours. De la manière d’étudier et de traiter l’Histoire Naturelle’ in Histoire Naturelle, vol. 1, 1749, trans. J. Lyon, ‘The “Initial Discourse” to Buffon’s Histoire naturelle: The First Complete English Translation’, Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 9 n. 1 (1977), 133–81, pp. 168–70.
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© 2015 Marco Solinas
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Solinas, M. (2015). Indirect Supremacy. In: From Aristotle’s Teleology to Darwin’s Genealogy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137445773_4
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