Species

18 Species

Hort notes in a footnote that Theophrastus

uses eidos and genos almost indiscriminately. Here tōn holōn genōn means the same

as tois holois eidesi; and below genōn and eidōn both refer to the smaller divisions

called merē above.

Theophrastus is attempting, in a non-systematic and perhaps less careful manner,
to apply Aristotle’s philosophy of classication to botany, but he uses these terms in
a more vernacular sense of “form” and “race” or “stock.” In any case, his theory of
classication, if it can be called that, is morphological and seeks in this the “nature”
of the plants. Species as such has no special meaning for him here. To back up this
interpretation, note that in his Metaphysics,^74 he offers the same view as Aristotle:

Knowing, then, [does] not [occur] without some difference.^75 For both, if [things] are

other than each other, there is some difference, and, in the case of universals where the

[things that fall] under the universals^76 are more than one, these too differ of necessity,

be the universals genera or species.^77

In general, though, to perceive simultaneously the identical in many is [the task] of

knowledge,^78 whether, in fact, it is said [of them] in common and universally or in some

unique way with regard to each, as, for example, in numbers and lines, and animals

and plants; complete is the one [consisting] of both. There are, however, some [knowl-

edges] whose end is the universal (for therein is their cause), while of others it is the

particular, those in respect of which division [can proceed] down to the individuals, as

in the case of [things] done and [things] made: for this is how their actualized state is.^79

Consequently, marking differences is how science is done.
Zirkle says that Theophrastus spent the entirety of Book II showing how species
could change from one to another.^80 Given the informal way in which Theophrastus
talks about species, we might consider this doubtful. In fact, what he talks about
there is generation (including spontaneous generation), “but growth from seed or
root would seem most natural,”^81 and especially vegetative propagation. Zirkle
appears to be referring to the “degeneration” of some cultivars into wild forms.^82 The
oak sometimes “deteriorates from seed,”^83 for example, so that the child is unlike the
parent. Sometimes wild trees like pomegranates, gs, and olives can spontaneously
change into a domestic form, and vice versa, and so on.^84 It is a very long stretch to

(^74) Gutas 2010.
(^75) Greek: diaphoras.
(^76) Greek: katholou.
(^77) 8b16–20.
(^78) Greek: epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη), which is sometimes translated as “science” but which means more
exactly “skill” or “knowledge.”
(^79) 8b24–9a4. “Actualized state” translates energeia (ἐνέργεια), “activity” or “operation.”
(^80) Zirkle 1959, 639.f
(^81) II.1.1; see also Book I of De causis plantarum, 1.2–3, 5.1−2, but Theophrastus notes that this is some-
times from “unnoticed seeds” in 5.3 and 5.4.
(^82) For example, II.2.5.
(^83) II.2.6, cf. De causis plantarum, I.9.1.
(^84) II.3.1.