The mechanical life of plants: Descartes on botany

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the French philosopher René Descartes was far more involved in the study of plants than has been generally recognized. We know that he did not include a botanical section in his natural philosophy, and sometimes he differentiated between plants and living bodies. His position was, moreover, characterized by a methodological rejection of the catalogues of plants. However, this paper reveals a significant trend in Descartes's naturalistic pursuits, starting from the end of 1637, whereby he became increasingly interested in plants. I explore this shift by examining both Descartes's correspondence and several notes contained in theExcerpta anatomica. Grounded in direct observations, Descartes's work on vegetation provides a modest, though not unimportant, contribution to a natural-philosophical approach to the vegetal realm. This had a direct bearing on his lifelong ambition to explain the nature of living bodies and also fuelled the emergence of botany as a modern science.

Magnifying the first points of life: Harvey and Descartes on generation and scale

“…56 The plant seed, he explained, differed from that of animals and humans in that it was harder and more solid, whereas human and animal seeds were more fluid. 57 In animals and humans, he continued, both male and female contributed with liquids, which began to act on each other after intercourse "like a kind of yeast" producing heat and agitation, which again caused the liquids to expand. 58 Descartes drew analogies between the heat produced in this very first stage of life and fermenting wine and drying hay.…”

Mechanical Philosophy: Reductionism and Foundationalism

“…The actuality of an immanent principle of motion in nature remained a debate in this domain well into the eighteenth century. The use of reductionistic mechanism in the life sciences where immanent organic growth (the preeminent form of Aristotelian motion) was seemingly irreducible also remained an abiding difficulty (Des Chene 2001;Hutchins 2015;Baldassarri 2019). Nonetheless Descartes' affirmation of reductionism and foundationalism was consistent on this account.…”

Plants as Machines: History, Philosophy and Practical Consequences of an Idea

“…9 Descartes' interest in plants is evidenced in at least two places in his work (Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium (AT XI 534-535) and Excerpta antomica (AT XI 627-629)). However, he did not seem to integrate them into his more general theories about life in any systematic way(Baldassarri, 2019).…”