It supports nutrition, growth and reproduction. The vegetative soul embodies the life force that distinguishes living matter, be it plants, animals or people, from inanimate matter, such as a rock.
All living things have souls with distinct faculties. His De Anima (literally On the Soul) classifies the nature of living things and discusses his notion of the soul ( psyche), which for him means the essence of a thing. The systematic search for answers goes back to Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), foremost of all biologists, taxonomists, embryologists and evolutionists. His intellectual history masterfully describes how consciousness, mind and soul are shape-shifters that philosophers, theologians, scholars, scientists and physicians seek to tame, by conceptualizing, defining, reifying, denying and redefining these terms through the ages to come to grips with the mystery that is our inner life. Psychiatrist and historian George Makari tries to illuminate this historical evolution in his Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind, published last November by W. These meanings adapt over time as society changes in response to wars and revolutions, catastrophes, trade and treaties, invention and discovery. This presupposes that you, the reader, and I have a precise sense of what is referred to by such seemingly innocent terms as “consciousness” and “mind.” And lest it be forgotten, the allied concept of “soul” (or spirit), banned from scientific discourse, continues to remain profoundly meaningful to vast throngs of humankind here and abroad.īut there's the rub! Unlike such material objects as “egg,” “dog” or “brain,” this triptych of intangible concepts is a historical construct, endowed with a universe of religious, metaphysical, cultural and scientific meaning, as well as an array of underlying assumptions, some clearly articulated, others wholly ignored.
My life, as well as this column, is dedicated to understanding the conscious mind and how it relates to the brain. Unlike any other empirical object in Nature, the mind's presence is immediately apparent to itself, but opaque to all external observers.
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