Plantanimal Imagination: Life and Perception in Early Modern Discussions of Vegetative Power

Relying on works by Plotinus, Galen, Ficino, Cesalpino, Kepler and Harvey, this chapter introduces the notion of ‘plantanimal’ imagination to explore the ways in which early modern philosophers and physicians conceptualized the elusive notion of vegetative perception. According to Plato, this perception was characteristic of plants (Timaeus, 77b). By concentrating on a series of interrelated notions that helped shape the category of vegetative perception (such as Ficino’s inborn intuitus, Cesalpino’s natural soul, Harvey’s unconscious tactility and Kepler’s telluric imagination), I will show how early modern thinkers manifested the need to expand the otherwise too narrow concept of animal and nervous reactivity. The process of nutrition will be at the centre of my argument. I will argue that the authors examined in this chapter laid the groundwork for a new idea of digestive and irritable self, through which living beings, including plants, were supposed to be endowed with a sense of natural discernment, capable of recognizing and altering their surrounding reality without losing any of their own identity.