Cosmology and Biology in Ancient Philosophy: From Thales to Avicenna

by Ricardo Salles, ed.
Cambridge University Press, 2021, 311 pages
reviewed by T. Nelson

This book is a collection of fifteen scholarly articles on the cosmogony of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the Platonians, Stoics, and the Neoplatonians.

The pre-Socratics, notably Thales, who famously said “All is full of gods,” laid the foundation for Platonian cosmogony, for which the most important and detailed text is Plato's Timaeus. This is discussed in the first five articles. In Timaeus, Plato says that the demiurge, or immortal divine maker, was a craftsman who designed the universe, including the deities or “created gods”, set things in motion, and then, rather like a contractor who runs off as soon as he gets paid whether the work is done or not, went off to do something else, leaving the gods to run the universe. Before leaving, the demiurge tells the gods that their immortality was conferred upon them but promises never to un-create them, which only he can do. These gods are identified as the stars and planets, whose motions define the thinking of the World Soul. The world had a beginning but no end and is indissoluble except “by he who bound it.”

According to Plato, the universe is intelligent because being intelligent is better than not being intelligent, and the world was designed to be as perfect as possible. It is a living being, like an animal (zoon), but needs no eyes or limbs because there is nothing outside the universe to see or interact with. It needs no air or food, but recycles its own waste. There are parallels but also stark differences between Platonian cosmogony and modern-day panpsychism.

According to Barbara M. Sattler, the Platonians even went so far as to try to explain how the universe's intelligence, or World Soul, worked. The soul consists of two intersecting bands made of three ingredients: Being, Difference, and Sameness. The Circle of the Same is undivided, while the Circle of the Different is divided into seven smaller circles. Their motions accordingly make visible different aspects of the cognitive activity of the World Soul. Thus, Sattler concludes, for Plato, astronomy and neurobiology are almost the same.

Articles 5 to 8 discuss Aristotle, who wrote several books on animals. Rather than exploring Aristotle's ideas on enetelechy (principle of actualization), which would have fit perfectly with the theme of the book, they mostly focus on how to tie his ideas to Plato's cosmogony and to modern concepts like cardiology or Ernst Haeckel's idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

The remaining articles discuss the cosmogony of the Stoics, including Chrysippus, Seneca, Apollodorus, and Zeno. This philosophy differs only slightly from the ideas in Timaeus. Finally, there is an article on Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, who taught that the demiurge's goal was to make an image of eternal being that is as good as possible, and an article on the Persian philosopher Avicenna.

The authors vary in writing skill. The Timaeus is frustratingly vague, so the authors spend much effort trying to deduce what the Platonists must have believed and why. While interesting and scholarly, as with any multi-author book it can't give a comprehensive historical account.

nov 07, 2023