Aristotle on the matter of mind 207
This consensus might easily give rise to the view that there is no such
thing as an Aristotelian ‘psychology’, or at least that psychology more or less
coincides with, or forms part of, biology in that it represents an investigation
of animals (and plants)qualiving beings, that is, ensouled natural things.
Although this view is, in my opinion, not entirely correct (see below),
it is in general accordance with Aristotle’s belief that the study of soul
‘contributes greatly’ to the study of nature,^3 his definition of soul as ‘the form
of the body’^4 and his programmatic statement that all psychic ‘affections’
K Lare ‘forms embedded in matter’K !
L.^5 For these
statements clearly imply that psychology, in Aristotle’s view, amounts to
psycho-physiology, an analysis of both the formal and the material (i.e.
bodily) aspects of psychic functions. The fact that inOn the Soulitself we
hear relatively little of these bodily aspects^6 might then be explained as a
result of a deliberate distribution and arrangement of information overOn
the souland theParva naturalia, which should be seen as complementary
parts of a continuous psycho-physiological account which is in its turn
complementary to the zoological works.^7
A very welcome consequence of this point of view could be that students
of Aristotle’s psychology pay more systematic attention to what the zoolog-
ical works have to say on the (bodily) conditions for the actual functioning
of the psychic powers identified inOn the Soul(nutrition, growth, loco-
motion, desire, sense-perception, imagination, thinking). Thus the present
chapter will deal with Aristotle’s views on the bodily aspects of think-
ing, and it will attempt to show that although thinking, according to
Aristotle, is perhaps itself a non-physical process, bodily factors have a
much more significant part to play in it than has hitherto been recognised.
In their turn, students of Aristotle’s zoological writings might feel an in-
creasing need to relate Aristotle’s views on bodily parts and structures of
organisms explicitly to the psychic functions they are supposed to serve,
Hardie ( 1964 ); Tracy ( 1969 ) and ( 1983 ); Verbeke ( 1978 ); Hartman ( 1977 ); Modrak ( 1987 ). This is
not to say that developmental approaches to Aristotle’s psychology have entirely disappeared; on
certain specific topics, such as the various discussions inOn the Souland theParva naturaliaof the
‘common sense’ and its physiological aspects, there is still disagreement about how to account for the
discrepancies; a developmental explanation is offered by Welsch ( 1987 ), a very important book which
seems to have gone virtually unnoticed by Anglo-American scholarship on Aristotle’s psychology, and
by Block ( 1988 ).(^3) De an. 402 a 5 – 6. (^4) De an. 412 a 19 – 21. (^5) De an. 403 a 25.
(^6) To be sure, physical aspects of the various psychic powers are referred to occasionally inDe an., e.g.
in 417 a 4 – 5 ; 420 a 9 ff.; 421 b 27 – 422 a 7 ; 422 b 1 ; 423 a 2 ff. Brief references inDe an. to the heart as
centre of psychic activity are discussed by Tracy ( 1983 ).
(^7) See Kahn ( 1966 ) 68 : ‘Thus the physiology of theParts of Animalsand the psychology of theDe Anima
are fully compatible, and they are in fact united in the psychophysiology of theParva Naturalia.’