The Architecture of the Science of Living Beings, Andrea Falcon

The monograph is primarily concerned with the deep structure of the study of perishable life as envisioned by Aristotle and Theophrastus. This entails giving full attention to a few transitional passages where Aristotle and Theophrastus offer their own account of what they are trying to accomplish in their own works. The subtitle Aristotle and Theophrastus on Animals and Plants has been chosen for three reasons. The first and most obvious is that two separate corpora of writings have been transmitted to us: one by Aristotle on animals and another by Theophrastus on plants. The second is that Aristotle and Theophrastus engaged in a study of perishable life via separate studies of animals and plants. What we know about the biological discourse before Aristotle and Theophrastus suggests that this approach to the study of perishable living beings was an important innovation. There is a third and final reason for the subtitle, which is also the least obvious: there is a precise order in which animals and plants were studied in the early Peripatos—namely, first animals and then plants. In his monograph, Falcon takes this order of study very seriously. It explores the reasons that may have led Aristotle and Theophrastus to adopt it.

There are a few questions prompted by this idiosyncratic approach to the phenomenon of perishable life. The first, and most pressing, is what licenses this strategy. The monograph argues that the Peripatetic decision to approach the study of perishable life via separate studies of animals and plants can be traced back to Aristotle’s claim that perishable life manifests itself in the form of plant and animal life (with human life as a special kind of animal life). The second is whether separate studies of animals and plants really exhaust the study of perishable life. Falcon answers this question in the negative. He shows that there is room in the Peripatetic scientific enterprise for a study of what is common to animals and plants in addition to separate studies of animals and plants. In the end, the Peripatetic study of perishable living beings as envisioned by Aristotle and Theophrastus turns out to be a complex scientific endeavor consisting of three distinct but related components: a study of what is common to animals and plants followed by separate but coordinated studies of animals and plants. However, what they are able, or willing, to say in common for animals and plants qua perishable living beings is limited by their own overall strategy. This is an interesting conclusion and is also a conclusion that prompts at least another question: Why is there a single science of living beings rather than two separate studies of animals and plants? In his book, Falcon shows it is analogy that allows us not only to bridge this gap but also to speak of a single science of perishable living beings.