Aristotle’s Heart-Centered Philosophy
Aristotle, unlike his teacher, Plato, and unlike many other well-known pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Democritus and Diogenes of Apollonia, is a cardiocentric (heart-centered) philosopher and a biologist. He locates the soul, as well as the source of sense-perception and animal motion in the heart. For him the heart is the most important and the first organ of the body, the arche or first principle, out of which all other organs emerge.[i][ii] In this article, I will give a brief overview of Aristotelian Cardiocentrism, which was supported and adhered to, following Aristotle, for centuries, by numerous other prominent philosophers such as Albert Magnus, Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, William Harvey, and many others. The limited scope of this article only covers that the heart was at the center of Aristotle’s philosophy, more specifically, biology.
Aristotle’s biological studies are, mostly, aimed at understanding what shapes and structures an animal (formal causes) and for the sake of what an animal is shaped as it is and behaves as it does (final causes). Aristotle had reasoned that the attention of the scholars, studying nature and natural substances, should not be on “blood, flesh, bones, vessels, and the like,” but on the causes, particularly on the formal and final causes. Formal and final causes reveal, in perishable natural substances, “absence of anything that is haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end.”[iii]
In his philosophy and Hylomorphism[iv], Aristotle makes a clear distinction between natural substances and artefacts. Unlike natural substances in which matter and form are considered inseparable and intertwined, essentially and conceptually, in artefacts they are, conceptually, separable and distinguishable from one another. It is this essential interlacing of the form and matter in living beings that provides them with the entelechy or the soul, a motion-causing internal principle.[v] The presence of the soul, within living bodies, radically differentiates them from artefacts. Unlike living beings that change and move from within, artefacts, due to the absence of this intrinsic principle or the soul, are moved externally, only. In a nutshell, in Aristotle’s philosophy, a body without an internal principle and self-motion is not a living body.
All living things, including animals, are self-movers. It is their internal, first principle, their soul, that moves them. The soul is what moves without being moved itself.[vi] In other words, it changes, without being changed itself. The soul structures and organizes the formation of the body, and it is for the sake of the soul that the body moves. In this sense, the soul is the efficient, formal, and final cause of motion or change in all living bodies.[vii] The body, and more specifically, the blood, is the material cause of change and motion in living bodies.[viii]
The notion of motion or change is significant in Aristotle’s philosophy as it denotes the actuality of a potentiality.[ix] What was once potential, through motion, becomes actual. There are three type of motions or changes[x]:
Quantitative, such as growth.
Qualitative, such as change in temperature.
Locomotive, such as change in location or place.
The first two types of change depend on the last type.[xi] In other words, for any type of change to occur, a change in location of some thing(s) is necessary.
In the body, the soul functions from the location of the heart, the first principle (Arche) of the body. All motions or changes move to and from the heart (Arche).
“It is reasonable that motions run from the parts to the arche and from the arche to the parts and so reach one another. Let A be the arche. Then the motions from each letter in the diagram we have drawn arrive at the arche, and from the arche, as it moves and changes, being potentially many, the motion of B goes to B, that of C to C, that of both to both. But from B to C it goes by going first from B to A, as to an arche, then from A to C, as from an arche.”[xii]
Corcilius and Gregoric have depicted the heart as the hub of animal motion in Aristotle’s philosophy as follows.[xiii]
According to their studies, the heart is at the centre of animal motions in Aristotle’s philosophy. An external, physical or mental, object causes a change in a peripheral sense organ. Any change in any organ is perceived or felt by the heart. Consequently, and accordingly, the heart changes qualitatively, first. A qualitative change in the heart is followed by a quantitative change or a mechanical motion within the heart. Both, the qualitative and the quantitative, changes in or of the heart affect the body outside of the heart and result in the movement of the flesh, joints, and limbs of the body.
“Unless a motion from the peripheral sense organ reaches the heart, perception will not take place.”[xiv] The heart, viewed by Aristotle as a command centre, a central sensorium, perceives environmental changes surrounding the body, and accordingly moves to cause internal motions within the body to respond to those changes. Aristotle views the heart as the sense organ common to all peripheral sense organs[xv] and the master sense organ to which all sense organs lead.[xvi]
As stated before, for Aristotle, all motions, within a living substance, originate intrinsically from the first principle, the soul.[xvii] Similarly, in a living body, according to Aristotle, all bodily motions originate from the heart, the arche of the body.[xviii] It follows that the soul is located in the heart. “The unextended and absolutely unmoved soul-principle of animal locomotion is in the heart as the centre of incoming [perceptual] and outgoing [motoric] motions.”[xix]
It is important to note that Aristotle was aware that there were competing theories about where sense-perception originates. The list of the opponents to his Cardiocentrism includes[xx][xxi][xxii]:
The Sicilian School
Alcmaeon of Croton
Diogenes of Apollonia
One or a few Hippocratic authors
Democritus of Abdera
Plato, who said, “[The head] is the divinest part of us and lords over all the rest.”[xxiii]
Having Plato and others on the opposing side, Aristotle, at least in his mind, must have had strong reasons to locate the origin of sense-perception and the soul in the heart.
There are at least seven reasons given by Aristotle[xxiv]:
The heart is the first organ to appear and be endowed with self-movement, and the last to fail at death.[xxv]
The heart is the first organ to appear in order to orchestrate further differentiation and organization of the growing body.[xxvi]
The Heart is both homoiomerous and heteromerous.[xxvii] Its homoiomerous parts permit it to receive sense-perception from other homoiomerous sense organs, and its heteromerous parts are suitable to result in bodily movements.[xxviii]
Its steady motion indicates the presence of life and sense-perception in the heart.[xxix]
The heart is the source of heat for the body and the soul is “aglow with fire” in the heart. Life and heat exist, simultaneously. The absence of the latter implies the absence of the former.[xxx]
The heart is located in the center of the body, which is the most honourable location. The center is always one and the best place for the source of life or sense-perception, since it is (almost) equally within the reach of every part. It is the most appropriate location for a “ruler.”[xxxi]
The common sensorium belonging to all sense organs is located in the heart. Sense impressions from the peripheral sense organs are gathered in the heart for comparison.[xxxii]
It is outside of the scope of this article to elaborate on each of these reasons given by Aristotle. This short article covers the fact that the heart is at the center of Aristotle’s philosophy. It does not cover how the heart functions as the centre of all bodily motions. In other words, the mechanism through which the heart controls all bodily movements and changes is outside of the scope of this article. The topics that are not covered in this article, which are directly related to the mechanism of the heart are the following:
Aristotle’s conception of Pneuma, a corporeal instrument of the soul, within the heart
Aristotle’s conception of innate/vital heat, and its central function in the heart
The role of pain and pleasure and their interchangeability with natural perception of the heart
Thermic responses of the heart to feeling pain and pleasure
Mechanical pulling and pushing of the heart due to the alterations caused by the Pneuma
The cascade of events that happen inside the heart, when an object is perceived
Indubitably, there is much more that can be written about Aristotle’s heart-centered theory of animal motion. However, based on this brief article, and what we know of Aristotle and his writings, we can be certain that he would not unthoughtfully inherit a theory and merely embellish it. He diligently and meticulously argued for his Cardiocentrism, and today, in our higher-education institutions, as we frequently and consistently pay attention to Aristotle’s works and theories, it is time and justified to rethink and reconnect with his Cardiocentrism, too, to better understand it with a fresh set of eyes.
FOOTNOTES & CITATIONS:
[i] Parts of Animals III.4, 666a18-22; Generation of Animals II.6, 742b33-37
[ii] Corcilius, Klaus, and Pavel Gregoric. "Aristotle’s model of animal motion." Phronesis 58, no. 1 (2013): 52-97. P. 88
[iii] Parts of Animals 645 a 24
[iv] The doctrine that physical objects result from the combination of matter and form
[v] De Anima I.4, 408b6-7
[vi] De Anima I.3, 406a2; II.4, 415b10-12
[vii] Corcilius, Klaus, and Pavel Gregoric. "Aristotle’s model of animal motion." Phronesis 58, no. 1 (2013): 52-97. p.87
[viii] Parts of Animals II.2, 647b26-28; II.2, 651a12-15
[ix] Physics 201a10-11, 27-29, 201b4-5
[x] Physics VI.2, 243a6-10
[xi] Physics VII.2, 243a11, VII.7, 260a26-26I a26, VII.9, 265b
[xii] On the Motion of Animals 11, 703b26-35
[xiii] Corcilius, Klaus, and Pavel Gregoric. "Aristotle’s model of animal motion." Phronesis 58, no. 1 (2013): 52-97.
[xiv] Ibid. P. 59
[xv] On Youth and Old Age, 1, 467b28
[xvi] On Sleep and Waking, 2, 455a33-4
[xvii] De Anima I.4, 408b15-20
[xviii] On the Motion of Animals 11, 703b26-35
[xix] Corcilius, Klaus, and Pavel Gregoric. "Aristotle’s model of animal motion." Phronesis 58, no. 1 (2013): 52-97. P. 86
[xx] Frampton, Michael F. "Aristotle's cardiocentric model of animal locomotion." Journal of the History of Biology 24, no. 2 (1991): 291-330
[xxi] Clarke, Edwin. "Aristotelian concepts of the form and function of the brain." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 37, no. 1 (1963): 1-14
[xxii] Clarke, Edwin, and Jerry Stannard. "Aristotle on the anatomy of the brain." Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences (1963): 130-148
[xxiii] Timaeus, 44d
[xxiv] Frampton, Michael F. "Aristotle's cardiocentric model of animal locomotion." Journal of the History of Biology 24, no. 2 (1991): 291-330
[xxv] Generation of Animals II.5,741b15-20; On Youth and Old age 3, 468b28-31; History of Animals VI.3, 561a9-13; Parts of Animals III.4, 666a18-22; Generation of Animals II.6, 742b33-37.
[xxvi] Generation of Animals ll.4, 739b33-740a13
[xxvii] “Homoiomerous parts are stuffs, like bronze or flesh, which Aristotle believes have no internal structure. Every part of a homoiomerous stuff is the same as every other part, containing the same ratio of elements. … The bodily organs, hands, feet, eyes, hearts, etc., are heteromerous, since they do have internal structure, with different parts of them made up of different stuffs.” (Taken from: Ainsworth, Thomas, "Form vs. Matter", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition.)
[xxviii] Parts of Animals II.1, 647a22-33; 646a12-b10
[xxix] On Youth and Old Age 3, 469a17-20
[xxx] On Youth and Old Age 4, 469b6-20; 14(8), 474b10-13; 22(16), 478a29-30
[xxxi] Parts of Animals III.4, 666a1 3-16; III.4, 665b18-21; On Youth and Old Age 4, 469a27-b1
[xxxii] On Youth and Old Age 3, 469a10-14; De Anima III.2, 426b17-427b16; On Sleep and Waking 2, 455a12-21