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Logoi Spermatikoi and the Concept of Seeds in the Mineralogy and Cosmogony of Paracelsus Hiro HIRAI *

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Logoi Spermatikoi and the Concept of Seeds in the Mineralogy and Cosmogony of Paracelsus Hiro HIRAI * Logoi Spermatikoi and the Concept of Seeds in the Mineralogy and Cosmogony of Paracelsus Hiro HIRAI * Abstract: Paracelsus’s concept of seeds is an important contribution to Renaissance theories of matter. Unlike the alchemists’ notion of metal seeds, it has a strong Christian orientation, based on a particular inter- pretation of the biblical Creation story. It is in this cosmogonical aspect that Paracelsian seeds are more akin to the seminal reasons of Augustine than to the logoi spermatikoi of the Stoics or Plotinus. The present study examines the Augustinian background of this Paracelsian concept and Marsilio Ficino’s intermediary role in its origination. Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin Keywords: Paracelsus, seeds, logoi spermatikoi, seminal reasons, Plotinus, Augustine, Marsilio Ficino. Résumé : Le concept de semence de Paracelse constitue une contribu- tion importante aux théories de la matière de la Renaissance. À la dif- férence de la notion alchimique des semences des métaux, ce concept prend une orientation nettement chrétienne fondée sur l’interprétation singulière du récit de la Création. C’est par cet aspect cosmogonique que les semences paracelsiennes s’approchent plus des raisons sémi- nales de saint Augustin que des logoi spermatikoi des stoïciens ou de Plotin. La présente étude examine le fond augustinien du concept para- celsien et le rôle qu’a joué Marsile Ficin dans la genèse de ce concept. Mots-clés : Paracelse ; semences ; logoi spermatikoi ; raisons séminales ; Plotin ; Augustin ; Marsile Ficin. Introduction Historians have recently started taking an interest in the inluence of Stoic physics on scientiic thought in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries. However, when faced with the dificulty of sur- veying all writings containing Stoic ideas – a dificulty on which Gérard Verbeke has remarked – the best approach is without a doubt to identify and trace the Stoic themes that were gradually * Hiro Hirai, Vice Editor, Early Science and Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands). Revue d’histoire des sciences I Volume 61-2 I July-December 2008 I Document downloaded www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin Hiro HIRAI incorporated into Western thought.1 It appears to me that, com- pared to the well-known related doctrine of pneuma (spiritus, mind, or Geist),2 the theory of logoi spermatikoi is not as exhaus- tively explored.3 This theory is an ingenious invention of Stoic physics. Granted, the pre-Socratic philosophers freely used the metaphor of “seed” (sperma) in reference to the origin of material or quantitive exis- tence in their theories of nature. For instance, Anaxagoras used the word “sperma” to refer to the beginning of natural things, while the ancient Pythagoreans considered the irst step of the formation of the entire universe to be a “seminal point.”4 As for the notion of the seminal principle, which was regarded as a kind of creative force, it was developed in embryological speculations.5 It was with the Stoics that the active principle of the universe explic- itly became seminal for the irst time, unifying the role of creative Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin power and that of the origin of being. This was the doctrine of the logoi spermatikoi. In the monistic, deterministic system of the Stoics, the logoi sper- matikoi were responsible for the transmission and preservation of the speciicity of each type of natural thing. The inluence of this doctrine can be found in the Hellenistic and Latin philoso- phers, as well as among the Christian apologists of the irst century 1 - See Gérard Verbeke, The Presence of Stoicism in Medieval Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 1-19. 2 - See Gérard Verbeke, L’Évolution de la doctrine du pneuma du stoïcisme à saint Augustin (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1945); Marta Fattori and Massimo Bianchi (ed.), Spiritus: IV° colloquio internazionale del lessico intellettuale europeo (Rome: Laterza, 1984); James J. Bono, “Medical spirits and the medieval language of life,” Traditio 40 (1984): 91-130; Daniel P. Walker, Spiritual and demonic magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg, 1958); Antonio Clericuzio, “The Internal Laboratory: The Chemical Reinterpretation of Medical Spirits in England (1650-1680),” in Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries, ed. Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 51-83. 3 - On Greco-Roman antiquity, Heinz Meyer, Geschichte der Lehre von den Keimkräften von der Stoa bis zum Ausgang der Patristik (Bonn: Hansteins, 1914), remains a very useful reference. 4 - Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 237-51; David E. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1977), 60-90. 5 - Anthony Preus, “Science and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals,” Journal of the History of Biology 3(1970): 1-52; Iain M. Lonie, The Hippocratic Treatises “On Generation,” “On the Nature of the Child,” “Diseases IV”: A Commentary (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981). II Document downloaded www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin Logoi Spermatikoi and the Concept of Seeds... A.D.,6 most prominent of which were Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) and Augustine (354-430 A.D.). Plotinius used the Stoic idea of logoi spermatikoi while modifying and spiritualizing its materialist con- tent. Likewise, Augustine’s theory of “seminal reasons” (rationes seminales) is based on the logoi spermatikoi of the Stoics and of Plotinus. It was through the Augustinian tradition that the idea of the logoi spermatikoi was transmitted to the Latin world of the Middle Ages.7 Once scholastic Aristotelianism came to dominate Western intel- lectual life, the idea of the seminal principle became less promi- nent. Its role was often replaced by a composite of various natu- ral forces, a typical example of which was the idea advanced by Albert the Great (c. 1193-1280): a combination of the forces of the four elements, the celestial bodies, and the prime mover.8 As for Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) with his theory of the “substantial Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin form,” he preferred the potentiality of matter to seminal reasons that are immanent to matter. The perpetuation of the concept after Aquinas is therefore little studied by historians. Medieval alchemy, which favored sexual analogies and explicit hylozoism under the inluence of Stoic biocosmology, retained the metaphor of the seed in its theory on the formation of metals and minerals. The most popular version was that of the two principles of sulfur and mercury,9 which were often seen as being active or 6 - Meyer, Geschichte der Lehre vol. 3, 26-122; Michel Spanneut, Le stoïcisme des Pères de l’Église, 2nd ed. (Paris: Le Seuil, 1969); Michel Spanneut, Permanence du stoïcisme (Gembloux: Duculot, 1973); Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1985). 7 - On the philosophers of the twelfth century, see Michael Lapidge, “The Stoic Inheritance,” in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 81-112, and especially 110-112. For Roger Bacon (c. 1214-c. 1292), see Pierre Duhem, Le Système du monde. Histoire des doctrines cos- mologiques de Platon à Copernic (Paris: Hermann, 1917), vol. 5, 385-388. Gilles de Rome (c. 1247-1316) used this teaching in his embryology. See M. Anthony Hewson, Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception (London: Athlone, 1975), 121-134. 8 - Albert the Great, De mineralibus, I, i, 8. On Albert the Great’s seminal reasons see Macarius Wengel, Die Lehre von den rationes seminales bei Albert dem Grossen (Würzburg: Mayr, 1937); Bruno Nardi, Studi di ilosoia medievale (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1960). 9 - Edmund O. von Lippmann, Abhandlungen und Vorträge zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften (Leipzig, 1913), vol. II, 143-150; Reijer Hooykaas, The Concept of Element: Its Historical-Philosophical Development (s. l., 1983), 20-27 and 62-6; Paul Kraus, Jâbir ibn Hayyân: Contribution à l’histoire des idées scientiiques dans l’Islam, 2nd ed. (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1986), 1; Robert P. Multhauf, The Origins of Chemistry (London: Oldbourne, 1966), 126 and 131-133. Revue d’histoire des sciences I Volume 61-2 I July-December 2008 III Document downloaded www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin Hiro HIRAI volatile. The alchemists called them the “seeds” of metal. Using Aristotle’s embryology as a model, they assumed that sulfur had an active force similar to male seed, and that mercury embodied the feminine role, called “menstruum” or “female seed.” Despite the biblical analogy that developed over time around the notion of seed among Christian alchemists, the term “seed” largely came to refer to concrete matter that the alchemist could manipulate in the laboratory. In the sixteenth century, we once again encounter a large num- ber of ideas derived from the seed in diverse scientiic ields, and called by different names: “seeds” (semina), “seeds of reasons” (semina rationum), “seminal reasons” (rationes seminales), “semi- nary” (seminarium), “seminal principle” (principium seminale), etc. To simplify the discussion, let us provisionally group them together under “the concept of seed.”10 In mineralogy, there was also a Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - 213.49.84.124 07/10/2014 22h45. © Armand Colin trend in which the concept was used to explain mineral formation at least until the triumph of Newtonian atomism in the eighteenth century. Frank D. Adams has already shed light on this point, but without examining its philosophical origins.11 More recently, David R.
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