Animals in the World by Pierre Pellegrin & Anthony Preus

Author:Pierre Pellegrin & Anthony Preus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

A General Theory of Homoiomeries?

When one reads the passage, cited at the beginning of this chapter, from book 4 of the Meteorologica (4.10, 388a13), one gets the impression, as I said, that Aristotle here has in mind a general unified theory of homoiomeries. Let’s begin by citing this passage more completely:

It is by these properties and differences that homoiomerous bodies differ from each other, as we have said, by touch, taste, odor, and color. I call “homoiomeries” for example things mined like copper, gold, silver, brass, iron, stone, and other materials of this kind, as well as materials derived from them; also the parts of animals and plants, for example flesh, bone, tendon, skin, viscera, hair, fibers, blood vessels, from which the anomoiomeries are constituted, like face, hand, foot, and all the parts of this kind, and in plants the homoiomeries are wood, bark, feather, root, and every part of this kind. Since these (ταῦτα) are constituted by another cause, but that out of which they are constituted has for matter the dry and the humid (consequently, earth and water, for these possess these two powers in the most obvious way) and those have for agent causes the hot and cold (for these are what produces condensation and solidification from the first ones), let us consider which of the homoiomeries are forms of earth, which of water, and which are both. (Meteorologica 4.10, 388a10)

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