Soul's Tools

This paper explores the various ways Aristotle refers to and employs “heat and cold” in his embryology. In my view, scholars are too quick to assume that references to heat and cold are references to matter or an animal’s material nature. More commonly, I argue, Aristotle refers to heat and cold as the “tools” of soul. As I understand it, Aristotle is thinking of heat and cold in many contexts as auxiliary causes by which soul activities (primarily “concoction”) are carried out. This, as I argue, is what it means to call them “tools” of soul. An upshot of this investigation is the fuller picture of Aristotle’s conception of efficient causation it provides in general, and the better understanding of the efficient causal operation of an organism’s nature or soul it provides in particular

Aristotle on the Powers of Thermic Equilibrium

Popa focuses on the role of the two basic active dunameis, the hot and the cold, in Aristotle, Meteorology IV. There, the dispositional properties of the homoeomers are often defined and explained in virtue of bodies’ reactions to heat and cold: some homogeneous bodies are solidifiable by heat, others by cold. Popa argues that Meteor. IV aims to account for the coming about and persistence of uniform stuffs by appealing to what he calls “thermic equilibrium” (summetria, logos). The main purpose of this chapter is to clarify the ways in which Aristotle puts this notion to work in his study of homogeneous materials (especially in Meteor. IV) and, through this clarification, to contribute to a better understanding of the role played by proper or internal natural heat in his scientific works