Plants

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Dinesh ^club

. . . Aristotle says that motion is a kind of life possessed by all things that exist in nature. But all natural objects participate in motion. Therefore all natural objects participate in life.

Further, plants are said to live because [they undergo] growth and decrease. But local movement [i.e., locomotion, or physical displacement]if more perfect than that. . . . Since, then, all natural bodies have in themselves a principle of local movement, it would seem that all natural bodies have life.

Further among natural bodies the elements are less perfect, but life attributed to them e.g., we speak of “living water.” Therefore ‘fortiori’ other natural bodies have life.

“On the other hand,” Aquinas then cites Pseudo-Dionysius as saying that lower than plants is alive. He completes his discussion by defining life much as Plato defined soul: as self-generating motion. Animals and plants have his power and thus are liave. Inanimate natural bodies, such as flowing water and moving stars, have only the “appearance of self-movement. They are in fact moved by something else -- “the cause which produces them” -- not “from themselves.” Hence, we call inanimate moving objects “living” only “by metaphor,” or “by analogy.” This is clearly approaching a modern definition of life. . . . ~page 74

3 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

3 years ago.

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