ron
(Ron)
#1
210 Aristotle and his school
to a large extent, but the study of soul comprises both more and less than
the study of living beings: ‘more’ in the sense that there seems to be at least
one psychic function which does not involve bodily organs or processes
(although it cannot function without bodily organs or processes being
present or taking place and its functioning can be influenced, i.e. both
improved and disturbed, by bodily factors); and ‘less’ in the sense that it
only studies living things under a certain aspect (their being ensouled, i.e.
alive), or perhaps not so much ‘ensouled beings’ as ‘soul’ itself, whereas
biology also deals with characteristics of living things that seem to have
hardly any, or even no ‘psychic’ aspect at all, for example differences in
the shape of certain bodily organs, or characteristics that are at best very
indirectlyrelated to the psychic functions they are supposed to serve.
These considerations are of some importance when it comes to compar-
ing the various accounts of psychic powers and activities we find in Aris-
totle’s works. For these accounts sometimes show discrepancies or even
divergences that cannot easily be reconciled. Any attempt at relating, or
even uniting, Aristotle’s statements on soul functions inOn the Soul, the
Parva naturalia, and the zoological writings (not to mention theEthics
and theRhetoric) into a comprehensive picture should take into account
the differences in scope, purpose, method and subject matter of the var-
ious works concerned in order to arrive at a correct assessment of what
Aristotle may be up to in these contexts and of the kind of information
we may reasonably expect there. For example, concerning a psychic func-
tion such as sense-perception, one might say that its treatment inHist.
an. 4. 8 – 10 (together with voice, sleep and sex differentiation) is mainly
determined by the question of its distribution over various kinds of ani-
mals, and so Aristotle is only interested in dealing with questions such as
whether all animals have sense-perception, whether they all have all the
special senses, whether they all partake in sleep, and so on. One might
subsequently say thatHist. an. 7 – 9 andGen. an. 5 discuss thedifferences
that manifest themselves among different species of organisms with regard
to, among other things, their perceptual apparatus, whereas inOn the Soul
and theParva naturaliaAristotle focuses on what all living beings possess-
ing sense-perception havein common. The discussion of the sense-organs
inParts of Animalsmay then be said to be determined by a ‘moriologic’
perspective in which the special sense-organs are considered with a view to
their suitability for the exercise of their respective special sense-functions.
And finally, Aristotle’s reasons for dealing with particular aspects of sense-
perception at one place rather than another may be quite trivial, for example
