Species

Species and the Birth of Modern Science 49

species of the superordinate genus, “so that there is one continuous and perfect uni-

verse.” Since the “maximum union” is God, species of lower and higher genera are

not united in something that cannot vary, but in a “third species” in which individu-

als differ by degrees. He relates this to the scala naturae explicitly, in “the books of

the philosophers” (that is, in Aristotle and his successors). He says,

Therefore, no species descends to the point that it is the minimum species of some

genus, for before it reaches the minimum it is changed into another species; and a simi-

lar thing holds true of the [would-be] maximum species, which is changed into another

species before it becomes a maximum species. ... Accordingly, it is evident that spe-

cies are like a number series which progresses sequentially and which, necessarily, is

nite, so that there is order, harmony, and proportion in diversity....^10

The gradualism of the Great Chain is evident, as also is the inuence of the neo-

Platonic view of classication. Of particular note is that Cusa’s examples are bio-

logical ones. In fact, Cusa apparently suggested (but did not do) experimental work

on plants to uncover their natures.^11 More importantly, he allows for a formal and

gradual change from one species of a higher level to a species of the next level below.

This is not in any sense evolutionary, but it lays some groundwork for an evolution-

ary account to develop later.

MARSILIO FICINO: THE PRIMUM OF THE GENUS

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) was responsible for a number of neo-Platonic texts

being translated and published under Cosimo de Medici. Among other texts, he over-

saw texts by Porphyry, Proclus, Plotinus, and Dionysius the Areopagite; all source

texts for the neo-Platonic philosophy.^12

In his discussion of the genus–species distinction, he is at pains to view the logical

progression of Aristotle as being a description of the actual^13 progression of things,

and God, of course, is the source of all things. In his Five Questions Concerning the

Mind, Ficino writes:

The motion of each of all the natural species proceeds according to a certain principle.

Different species are moved in different ways, and each species always preserves the

same course in its motion so that it proceeds from this place to that place and, in turn,

recedes from the latter to the former, in a certain most harmonious manner.^14

Here we have again the generative notion of species that we saw in Lucretius.

However, unlike the materialist account of Lucretius, Ficino’s view is based upon

the “principle” of the species and of the primum of a genus (the ontological principle

primum in aliquo genere). Each genus has what later came to be thought of as a type

species, a rst and highest example of the kind, according to Ficino, the primum,

(^10) Hopkins 1981, §§185–187.
(^11) Morton 1981, 98f.
(^12) Cassirer et al. 1948, 185.
(^13) But not temporal. Ficino is dealing with atemporal, formal, progression.
(^14) Cassirer, Kristeller, and Randall 1948, 194.