Prospectus
There are two types of studies on life: the life of animals and that of plants. Aristotle makes a distinction that the plants have only one soul, that of nutritive, and that the life of plants is a simple one. The life of animals, on the other hand, is more complex and possesses the sensitive soul in addition to the plants’ nutritive soul. Further, Aristotle tells us that in order to study about plants, one needs to have studied about animals first. This might strike us as a surprise, for why study what is complex first rather than discuss about what is simple? Indeed, his collaborator on the project, Theophrastus’ method of investigation on plants was in sync with Aristotle’s. It is also important to bear in mind that Aristotle did not write on plants but merely mentioned about them in the course of discussing about animals. There he speaks of plants as ‘upside-down’ analogously with regard to the ways in which animals take in food, i.e. animals take in food from the mouth, the upper part of the body, while plants take in food from the roots, which is analogous to the upper body for animals. However, we see there are instances in which plants do take in food from ‘the lower part’, i.e. leaves above the ground, as with the case for insectivorous plants like venus flytraps or sundews. Further, one of the primary diffreneces between animals and plants is that the former has a stomach while the latter doesn’t. This is because animals take in undigested food, thereby needing a place for concocting the food, i.e. stomach, while plants take in food in the form of liquid, i.e. in the form already ‘concocted’, from the earth. Having a stomach is particularly important in Aristotle’s theory of animals. For one, the more teeth means the less number of stomachs needed in an animal, for another, it acts as a concocting device, discharging excess and residue while decomposing the food and turning it into nutrition. The nutrition goes to the upper part of the body while the residue goes to the lower part. The mid-point is the stomach, the digestive organ where the sorting of the food happens. This why the less teeth you have, the more stomachs you will need since chewing is the first stage of digestion. Following this, though, all animals with a tooth must have a stomach. But what about those plants that eat insects? If consuming of an unconcocted food requires one to have a stomach, should insectivorous plants not also need a stomach? Another curious case is with anteaters, for they do not have teeth but possess a stomach. Aristotle said that all animals that have teeth must have a stomach, which does not mean those animals that do not have teeth cannot have a stomach. But if some animals with no teeth, like turtles and tortoises, can have a stomach, why can’t plants have a stomach as well?
I will first discuss what it means to be a plant and what takes one to be qualified as an animal, why it is important to study plants first as well as examining whether Aristotle believes there is such a unified study as deals with life as a whole. Second, I will compare the similarities or differences between Aristotle’s account of plants and that of Theophrastus’. Finally, discussions will follow about insectivorous plants and whether or not such an exception could affect Aristotle’s entire project to speak about life.
