This chapter contains an outline of the book and of its main argument. It concentrates on the deep structure of the Peripatetic science of perishable living beings, which consists in separate but coordinated studies of animals and plants. It provides the reader with an initial idea of the contents of the book with an emphasis on the epistemic requirements that shape the Peripatetic study of perishable life.

Theophrastus shares Aristotle’s methodological insight that the scientific inquiry unfolds in stages, and that the two main stages of any scientific inquiry are the collection of the relevant data followed by their explanation – the pre-explanatory and the explanatory stage of inquiry, respectively. This chapter shows that we should speak of two main stages of inquiry because the explanatory stage itself may unfold in various stages. In other words, the work that is required to arrive at an adequate (i.e., scientific) explanation may take place in steps and may require accomplishing different tasks. The chapter looks in some detail at how Theophrastus adopts this style of inquiry in his explanation of the various ways in which plants propagate.

The first and most important step into the Peripatetic study of living beings is the observation that life takes many forms. In the sublunary world, it takes the form of plant and animal life (with human life as a special kind of animal life). When Aristotle and Theophrastus speak of animals and plants, they never assume that they are a single form of life. This is confirmed by what we read at the outset of the Meteorology, where Aristotle outlines an ambitious research program that ends with separate yet coordinated studies of “animals and plants.” Whether there is unity, and how much unity there is, in these two studies remains an open question at the outset of the Meteorology. But when we look at the two corpora of writings that Aristotle and Theophrastus have left on the topic of animals and plants, we see that the unity they are able secure is limited. Last but not least, this chapter shows that the study of the nutritive soul advanced in Aristotle’s De anima cannot secure unity within the study of animals and plants.

Aristotle’s De anima provides the foundation for a theoretically informed study of perishable life on the crucial assumption that the soul is that which distinguishes what is alive from what is not. It is because Aristotle and Theophrastus take animals and plants to be different kinds of perishable living beings that they are justified in approaching the study of perishable life through separate studies of animals and plants. The chapter offers a survey of the discourse on and around life before Aristotle and Theophrastus with a focus on Plato and the doxographical information on the Presocratic investigation of nature. It also considers the way in which the study of life is narrow down to the study of perishable life, that is animals and plants, as a result of the conceptual work done in Aristotle’s De anima.

This chapter plays an important role in the argument of the book. It shows that there is room in Aristotle’s life for a study of what is common to animals and plants in addition to separate studies of animals and plants. At the same time, it shows that what Aristotle is able, or willing, to say in common for animals and plants is truly limited. By the end of the chapter the reader will see that the Peripatetic study of life is a complex scientific endeavor consisting of at least three components: a study of what is common to animals and plants followed by separate yet coordinated studies of animals and plants. What Aristotle is able, or willing, to say in common for animals and plants is to be found within the boundaries of project of the Parva naturalia.

This chapter introduces the reader to how Theophrastus approaches the topic of plants by offering a selective discussion of the first book of History of Plants. This book is a prolegomenon to the study of plants. It is also a liminal space where Theophrastus negotiates the transition from the study of animals to the study of plants. From the very way Theophrastus refers to animals, we can infer that Theophrastus builds his whole edifice on the results achieved in the study of animals. This overall approach not only confirms that the Peripatetic study of perishable living beings is approached via separate studies of animals and plants but also suggests that the relevant order of study is first animals, then plants.

This chapter examines the not fully researched Hebrew manuscript MS hébr. 1199 from the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, which is an illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in northern Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. It describes plants and their uses, and is part of a specific herbal tradition called the ‘Alchemical Herbals’. There are specific illustrations of plants in this tradition in which the roots are emphasised (typically depicted in geometrical, zoomorphic, or anthropomorphic forms). It is apparent from a comparative analysis of both the texts and illustrations that the Jewish scribe(s) and artist deliberately altered the texts and illustrations. As will be demonstrated, Jews were also involved in another Latin manuscript within this tradition. This chapter provides insight into herbal knowledge, the people behind manuscripts production, and the practical function of the manuscripts. Furthermore, it illustrates how pharmacological knowledge was transmitted between cultures.

Sandra Shapshay looks at the joy Schopenhauer acknowledges us to feel in the presence of natural beauty. Many commentators subordinate this theory of pleasure to the cognitive aspect of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic. Shapshay resists this interpretation. But she also resists its opposite but still reductive or unifying strategy that minimizes the cognitive for the sake of the hedonic. Rather, she discards the notion that Schopenhauer had a unified aesthetic theory as not only false but undesirable. Instead, she shows that Schopenhauer develops two, mutually irreducible spectrums of aesthetic value, based on two different criteria. The spectrum that commentators acknowledge in Schopenhauer is the hierarchy of the arts, which puts architecture and fountainry at the bottom (as revealing the lower Ideas) and literature at the top, as a display of the higher, more complex ideas. The spectrum that is overlooked, but becomes visible if we take his more formalist views of natural aesthetics seriously, is the spectrum of the beautiful and sublime, where the beautiful – and botanical beauty in particular – lends itself more readily (than experiences at the sublime pole) to a state of mind that is not only tranquilizing but (in a departure from his usual attitude) positively joyful.

Our dietary choices affect our health and fitness in two ways: diet has a direct influence on the brain and other body parts and also influence the nature of our microbial populations in the gut. These two mechanisms frequently work together; a high salt diet can make high blood pressure worse and will influence the nature of our microbiota increasing inflammation – two issues which increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Our dietary choices strongly affect our health through direct influence on all our organ systems, and the nature of our microbial communities has profound influence on our health and fitness. In order to have a diverse bacterial community we need a diverse diet with different good sources of nutritional support. Fiber-rich foods enhance the gut barrier and lower inflammation throughout the body. Good sources of fiber are reviewed in this chapter, along with recommendations for a plant-based diet with antioxidants, little meat, and low levels of saturated fat. High levels of sugar and salt intake, alcohol, and processed foods should be avoided. Fish consumption is advised and vitamin and mineral containing foods are also considered.

Chapter seven examines cultural production and religious institutions in seventeenth-century royal courts, both Muslim and Hindu. Beginning with art and architecture commissioned by Jahangir and Shah Jahan, we then discuss elite lifestyles of both men and women. The opulence of court life attracted international visitors and led to cultural exchange leading to the introduction of chilis and other American plants. Next we examine non-Mughal cultural production in Rajput kingdoms whose attitudes toward the Mughals varied. Lifestyles of elite Rajput and Nayaka women are examined next, before we consider the courtly skills and sciences, such as letter-writing and astrology, that were admired in the Deccan sultanates, where literature with Sufi themes flourished. Royal patronage of three religious sites concludes the chapter.

When samples from a single taxonomic species are resolved as monophyletic, or coalescent, in a phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences, this is often the basis for “cryptic” or otherwise overlooked plant species. Here, we examine ecological evolutionary reasons behind genetic patterns within plant species.. We suggest that coalescence or monophyly of conspecific genetic samples occurs more commonly in animal than plant clades, which implies that plant species are more likely to have some combination of larger effective population sizes from a population or genomic perspective, inhabit less dispersal-limited habitats or niches, or have evolutionary younger ages. For woody plant species, we suspect that dry environments are more dispersal limited than wetter environments. We give examples that suggest coalescence of conspecific plant samples likely occurs more often among genetic samples taken from isolated populations that are phylogenetically niche conserved to the succulent biome. This is in comparison to those taken from isolated plant populations that are niche conserved to tropical wet forests. However, these suggested patterns will be context dependent. Recency of evolution, large effective population sizes, or polyploid genomes could work against detecting coalescent patterns of conspecific genetic samples in plant taxa that are niche conserved to the succulent biome.

Despite the critical role of plants in enabling all life on Earth, many people fail to recognize the importance of vegetal life ("plant blindness"). Further, most modern Eurowestern knowledges of plants tend to instrumentalize them, focusing on how plants are useful rather than on how they live their lives. The field of Critical Plant Studies (CPS) has recently emerged in the Humanities to challenge this situation; this chapter explores some of the central preoccupations of this body of work. Broadly speaking, CPS considers the histories and power dynamics involved in Eurowestern utilitarian relations with the vegetal world. In addition, borrowing from insights in the Natural Sciences and also from much older forms of plant knowledge, it considers plants as living organisms with their own forms of agency, being, and desire. These two threads are woven throughout the chapter, with the aim to demonstrate that plants are sophisticated and influential agents caught up in historical and ongoing forms of biopolitics, and that overcoming plant blindness means noticing not only what the plants are doing for us, but also how we are implicated in their unfolding lifeworlds.

Raised in the agriculturally rich Salinas Valley, Steinbeck was naturally fascinated by gardening, vegetables, and plant life in general. If Steinbeck’s experiments with animal consciousness are compromised by uncritical racial ideology, then his stories about plants have more radical implications. “The Chrysthanthemums” from The Long Valley explores the intimacy of the human-plant connection and imagines a form of human consciousness that verges on the passive receptivity of a plant-like existence as pure growth. Steinbeck’s approach to post-human subjectivity continues in “The White Quail,” which returns to interests in gardening and eugenics. Through its imagery, allusions, and theme of marriage, the story dismantles the assumptions of eugenics by questioning the symbolic identification suggesting that selective breeding of plants translated into possibilities for human betterment. A coda on The Grapes of Wrath and drought photography explores representations of human and vegetable reactions to drought to make clear the achievement and the limits of Steinbeck’s forays into alternate states of human consciousness in his stories.

Biology and theology are interdependent theoretical sciences for Aristotle. In prominent discussions of the divine things (the stars and their unmoved movers) Aristotle appeals to the science of living things, and in prominent discussions of the nature of plants and animals Aristotle appeals to the nature of the divine. There is in fact a single continuous series of living things that includes gods, humans, animals, and plants, all of them living and, in a way, divine. Aristotle has this continuum of divine beings, and a theory of value that corresponds to it, in mind not only in key parts of his theology and natural science (including astrophysics and biology), but also in his practical philosophy. Here I can do little more than call attention to some important texts and attempt to offer a coherent account of them, without being able to enter into the usual interpretive disputes. I begin by clarifying the terms “theology” and “biology” and their place in Aristotle’s division of philosophy. Next, I discuss how Aristotle’s theology is informed by his biology, and then how his biology is informed by his theology. I end by discussing some implications of the interdependence of biology and theology for Aristotle’s ethics and exhortation to philosophy.