Species

The Classical Era: Science by Division 27

the Roman Epicureans, who discussed the nature of sensation extensively, and that

the Aristotelians in the person of Porphyry are attempting to defend the essentialist

account against atomism.^125

AUGUSTINE: THE MUTABLE IN GOD’S DESIGN

Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430 ) Civitas Dei (The city of God) was nished in
about 426 , and espouses a Christianized neo-Platonism of sorts, which is not
surprising, as Augustine lived and worked in the Roman part of Africa from which
neo-Platonism sprang. Although not directly interested in matters of natural history,
he did assert that

all forms of mutable things, whereby they are what they are (of what nature soever they

be) have their origin from none but Him that is true and unchangeable. Consequently,

neither the body of this universe, the gures, qualities, motions, and elements, nor

the bodies in them from heaven to earth, either vegetative as trees, or sensitive also

as beasts, or reasonable also as men, nor those that need no nutriment but subsist by

themselves as the angels, can have being but from Him who has only simple being.^126

Forms (species) are thus maintained by the direct action of God, rather than any
internal or innate quality. Augustine’s focus is, as the title suggests, on heaven, and
bodies of organisms are of interest only so far as they are relevant to resurrection.
This lack of interest in the natural world extends until the late Middle Ages, as we
shall see. This chapter was inuential upon Peter Lombard (c. 1100–1160/4 ) in the
much-discussed Four Books of Sentences^127 where the same points are made.
One text of Augustine’s that has been interpreted to mean he held to an “evolu-
tionary” view is in his commentary on the meaning of Genesis:

Where, then, were they [plants, when they were created]? Were they in the earth in the

“reasons” or causes from which they would spring, as all things already exist in their

seeds before they evolve [develop—JSW] in one form or another and grow into their

proper kinds in the course of time? ... it appears [from Scripture—JSW] ... that the

seeds sprang from the crops and trees, and that the crops and trees themselves came

forth not from seeds but from the earth.^128

(^125) Barnes agrees [Porphyry 2003, 312–317], with more warrant than I have, that the traditional claim
of Stoic inuence has no basis in fact, and conjectures (pp. 356–358) that there are many “Epicurean
touches” in Porphyry. Preus 2002 notes that Plotinus, Porphyry’s teacher, had made some passing
comments on form (eidos) in the Enneads (V.9.6) which gives an Epicurean-style generative account
of species, in which logoi are the generative powers “in the seed” and of every part of an organism.
He says
(^) Some call this power in the seeds ‘nature,’ which was driven thence from those prior to it,
as light from re, and it turns and enforms the matter, not relying on the help of those much-
discussed mechanisms (levers), but by imparting the logoi. [Preus’ translation, 46]
(^126) Augustine 1962, in Book VIII, chapter 6.
(^127) Book I, Disc. III, chapter I, McKeon 1929, 190f.
(^128) De Genesi Ad Litteram, (The literal meaning of Genesis) c. 390 , Book V, chapter 4 [Augustine
1982, 151f ].