Overview: Presents a diachronic treatment of life-concepts running from Homer to the present.Traces the history of vegetable souls.Defends a Darwinian concept of vegetable souls as useful for modern biology.This book traces the history of life-concepts, with a focus on the vegetable souls of Aristotle, investigating how they were interpreted and eventually replaced by evolutionary biology. Philosophers have long struggled with the relationship between physics, physiology, and psychology, asking questions of organization, purpose, and agency. For two millennia, the vegetable soul, nutrition, an
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