Phusis Kai Phuta: Thinking with and about Plants in Greek Literature & Philosophy

In fr. 81 DK, Empedocles says that “wine is water from the bark (?) rotten in wood” (οἶνος ἀπὸ φλοιοῦ πέλεται σαπὲν ἐν ξύλῳ ὕδωρ). This apparently simple definition has received less attention than it deserves. Perhaps the first question that we must address is: What is this “wood”? Modern editors have given two answers: Wright reasonably takes it to be the wood of a cask or vat in which juice is fermented into wine; Gallavotti, Bollack, and Diels say that it is the wood of the vine.

Commentators beginning with Aristotle and Plato described many fifth-century inquirers, including Empedocles and Philolaus, as phusikoi or investigators of phusis. Empedocles and Philolaus both used forms of ‘phusis’ and ‘phuo’ to speak of at least some of the subject of their accounts of what is and of what is right or appropriate.

It is well known that early Greek philosophers (Presocratics) were interested in embryology, both as a distinct subject and as a source of analogies to illustrate cosmogonic theories (Baldry, Kahn, Wilford, Gemelli-Marciano, Lloyd). In turn, embryological speculation inspired its own host of analogies, using plant and craft metaphors to illustrate the invisible processes inside the womb.

Vegetal, Animal, and Menses in Aristotle's Generation of Animals

In Generation of Animals II.3, Aristotle offers the curious comparison that menstrual fluid, the material cause of an animal, is “no less alive than a plant is” (736a33–5). The assertion indicates that something about the potential for animal life might be illuminated by an analogy with plant life. But what, exactly, do we learn from the comparison?

Even though no fully articulated educational theory has survived Greek antiquity, there is sufficient evidence to allow us a glimpse into the various tropes through which the Greeks of the 5^th and 4^th c. B.C.E. conceived of education. Several metaphors about education figure prominently in poetry and prose of the period in question, most widespread being the ones emphasizing the gymnastic and hierarchical aspects of the educational process (Jaeger 1947; Too 2001; Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley 2009).

This paper considers the relationship between phusis and logos in the extant texts of Heraclitus, focusing especially on the explicit contrast between a logos that is ‘common’ (Laks-Most D2/Diels-Kranz B2) and a phusis that tends to conceal itself (LM D35/DK B123), even as both Heraclitus’ textual exposition (D1/B1) as well as right speech and action (D114b/B112) take place ‘in accordance with nature,’ kata phusin. Imp