Life Concepts from Aristotle to Darwin

Lucas John Mix is an associate of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, USA. He works at the intersection of biology, history, philosophy, and theology and has worked with NASA Astrobiology programs for the last 20 years on understanding the meaning and extent of life.

• 1. Vegetable Souls?.- 2. Greek Life – Psyche and Early Life-Concepts.- 3. Strangely Moved – Appetitive Souls in Plato.- 4. Three Causes in One – Biological Explanation in Aristotle.- 5. Life in Action – Nutritive Souls in Aristotle.-6. Plants versus Animals in Hellenistic Thought.- 7. The Breath of Life – Nephesh in Hebrew Scriptures.- 8. Life after Life – Spiritual Life in Christianity.- 9. Invisible Seeds – Life-Concepts in Augustine.- 10. Aristotle Returns – A Second Medieval Synthesis.- 11. Life Divided – Vegetable Life in Aquinas.- 12. Mechanism Displaces the Soul.- 13. Divided Hopes – Physics versus Metaphysics.- 14. Ghosts in the Machine – Vitalism.- 15. The Same and Different – Early Theories of Evolution.-16.  Vegetable Significance – Evolution by Natural Selection.- 17. “Vegetables” versus Modern Plants.- 18. Counting Lives- Regulators and Replicators.- 19. What Can Be Revived (and What Cannot).

“Life Concepts, Mix (Harvard) provides a comprehensive treatise of the soul, emphasizing nutritive or vegetable souls, from the concept's beginnings with Homer and pre-Socratic philosophers to significant development of the disparate views of Plato and Aristotle. … As a philosophical and theological work, Mix provides a meaningful and engaging account of a deep, enduring subject.” (Z. B. Johnson, Choice, Vol. 56 (8), April, 2019)​