"On Plants"
by Aristotle*
Edited by Jonathon Barnes
Summary
Aristotle started his essay by describing the popular arguments for whether plants have a soul or not. He referenced other philosophiser's opinions on the matter and compared and contrasted them to his own. He then went into great depth about the differences between many kinds of plants. In this particular discussion he went into great detail about the fruits of plants; what separates them, which kind grow where and on what plant, whether certain juices from certain fruits were drinkable or not, whether you could use the juices in other ways, etc. He performed a similar examination of the bark and branches of the plants. The next few pages were spent examining the habitat of different plants and making a general comparison between them all. He made a cursory sweep of how a plant grows and in what kinds of environments, then he went into more detail about the different locations like Greece, Egypt, etcAristotle started his essay by describing the popular arguments for whether plants have a soul or not. He referenced other philosophiser's opinions on the matter and compared and contrasted them to his own. He then went into great depth about the differences between many kinds of plants. In this particular discussion he went into great detail about the fruits of plants; what separates them, which kind grow where and on what plant, whether certain juices from certain fruits were drinkable or not, whether you could use the juices in other ways, etc. He performed a similar examination of the bark and branches of the plants. The next few pages were spent examining the habitat of different plants and making a general comparison between them all. He made a cursory sweep of how a plant grows and in what kinds of environments, then he went into more detail about the different locations like Greece, Egypt, etc that plants grow in. He mentioned an odd topic that I am not familiar with. He made some claims about plant seeds growing into different species of plant depending on the location of where they are grown. I am not experienced in agriculture but I have never heard anything like this before.
Book two is somewhat more of the same. He goes into more details about the physiology of plants. He has half of a page where he discusses the cause of earthquakes. He concludes that earthquakes are caused by air trapped underneath the earth that builds up to a point where it breaks free. This leads him into his next topic which is the 'rarity' of plants and material. Basically, a stone will sink because it has no 'rarity' or air inside of it while a piece of wood will because it has a large 'rarity,' or in other words, it is porous. One last topic of note is the causation of deserts. He concludes that normal soil is turned into a sandy desert when it stops raining and the sun drys it all out.
Discussion
I hate to say this, but this paper was not intriguing to me at all. While I can appreciate it for what it is and who it was written by, without motivate (a grade), I would definitely never have read this. As far as significance goes? I am honestly not sure. It might be one of the earliest definitive works on plant physiology and it definitely gives modern scientists a great view into the popular science and thought at the time. Other than that, the actual ideas proposed in this work seem few and far between. If so much of the essay wasn't devoted to "plant x grows in location y and has fruit z" then I could better understand why it is considered noteworthy.
