Philosophical Biology in Aristotle's Parts of Animals by Jason A. Tipton

Author:Jason A. Tipton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4.7 From Inside to the Outside to the Inside: The Primacy of Flesh and Touch

The argument first considers fluid uniform parts in all their manifestations (653b9). However, the non-fluid parts must still be considered. The fluid uniform parts are primarily tissues and things inside the body, those things not evident to the senses. The move from the wet to the non-fluid is, in a way, one from the inside to the outside.

Flesh (sarkos) is the part—it does, at first, seem counter-intuitive to call it a part—that covers the whole, it defines the outline of an organism’s form. This is why Aristotle can say that flesh is both a principle and a body itself (653b23). Flesh provides a kind of limit to the unlimited fluid parts like blood, fat and marrow. In a crude sense, flesh forms a bag or container by which the internal parts are limited.

In the beginning of PA II, we were treated with two different ways to differentiate the parts of animals: the division into three classes based on genesis (646a12) and the division of parts based on the instrumental and sensitive (647a3). In flesh, we have a part that overcomes the split between these two methods of differentiation. Flesh is used as an example of the uniform in the genetic account (646a3), as well as being treated as an organ of sense. Flesh is the part through which touch is mediated, which Aristotle identifies as the primary sense. And as we have already noted, flesh—unlike ears and eyes—is the organ of touch as well as the medium (653b25). Flesh must come in contact with that which is to be sensed; there is no distance in touch as in the other sensitives. Nature made touch in this way, Aristotle claims, because of necessity (653b29).

Our discussion of the parts that are on the outside is brief in this context. With the discussion of flesh more or less complete, we turn once again to the inside, to the system of bones. The bones, which are in their nature hard substances, exist for the sake of the preservation of the soft parts (653b33). Just as organisms must combine the hot and cold, so too must the hard and soft be combined in the composition of their parts. The role assigned to the bones is perhaps best illustrated in the case of things that have exoskeletons, which also explains how the discussion can turn from flesh to bone. In most animals the soft parts or flesh cover a bony skeleton, but some organisms, such as the various shell-skinned (ostrakoderma) creatures (654a2) have the reverse relation, namely, a hard substance encasing fleshy parts. The shell not only provides protection for the fleshy innards, but as Aristotle conjectures, it also insulates and protects a faintly burning heat (654a8). While the flesh functions as a bag or limit as well as an organ of sense for birds and mammals, the outer covering provides protection to the fleshy parts and to the heat generated for those organisms with shells.

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