Lucas Mix

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The Revd Dr Lucas Mix is a researcher in life-concepts at the intersection of biology, philosophy, and theology. He also works as an expert facilitator for interdisciplinary communication and outreach around questions of fundamental reality and values.

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Papers by Lucas Mix

Life in Action: Nutritive Souls in Aristotle

Aristotle saw nutrition as the most fundamental life activity, the ability to turn not-self into ... more Aristotle saw nutrition as the most fundamental life activity, the ability to turn not-self into self. That activity undergirds and supports all the others. He spoke concretely of three souls, identified by their life activities. Vegetables operate through nutrition and reproduction. They consume resources and have offspring. Animals interact with their environment through sensation and locomotion. They have the vegetable activities but they also sense and respond to stimuli. Finally, humans reason. Aristotle provides both etiological and a physiological accounts of vegetable souls. The etiological account can be usefully compared to evolution by natural selection. The physiological account, invoking vital heat, does not fit well with modern science. Nor do the concepts of form necessary to animal and rational souls.

9. The Inner Solar System

12. Life and Time

2. Living Science

Life in Space, 2009

Divided Hopes: Physics Versus Metaphysics

The mechanical philosophy created serious problems for accounts of life, often viewed as somewher... more The mechanical philosophy created serious problems for accounts of life, often viewed as somewhere between mind and matter. Bacon, Leibniz, and Kant all tried to clarify the mechanical position. They bridged or denied the Cartesian ontological divide, but erected epistemological barriers with very similar results. Bacon distinguished physics from metaphysics. Leibniz invoked physical nature and gracious monads. Kant suggested phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Multiple possibilities were explored in the search for a new conceptual foundation for biology. Idealists, influenced by Leibniz, Malebranche, and Hume critiqued empiricism, while iatromechanists began to find solely mechanical explanations of life. Together, they lay the foundations for a divided epistemology of natural science and the humanities.

Vegetable Souls?

Springer eBooks, 2018

6. Life in the Cosmos

What Makes Life Life-Like? The Dynamic Continuity of Living Things

Springer eBooks, 2022

Mechanism Displaces the Soul

Springer eBooks, 2018

After Aquinas, the Aristotelian concept of souls, carefully tended for two millennia, started to ... more After Aquinas, the Aristotelian concept of souls, carefully tended for two millennia, started to unravel. William of Ockham introduced nominalism and voluntarism, necessitating observation and leading to empiricism. Luther and Calvin questioned the dual creation and the power of human intellect. In the seventeenth century Gassendi and Descartes introduced the mechanical philosophy, pushing formal and final causes out of the natural world. The mechanical philosophers embraced a machine metaphor, an ontological elimination (materialism), and an etiological reduction. Only the last proved useful for advancing biology. Physiological and psychological accounts of life took on distinct and irreconcilable vocabularies, with the term “soul” frequently reserved for the latter. Biology lacked a unifying principle for the next two centuries.

Play among the stars: Astrobiology and intra‐action in Pryor's<i>Living with Tiny Aliens</i>

Dialog-a Journal of Theology, Mar 1, 2021

Aristotle Returns: A Second Medieval Synthesis

A second medieval synthesis arose through Muslim transmission of Aristotelian texts. This Aristot... more A second medieval synthesis arose through Muslim transmission of Aristotelian texts. This Aristotelian synthesis maintained subsistent souls but weakened the role of participation in cosmic life. Theologians reinterpreted Aristotle’s four causes, changing souls from dynamic processes into immaterial agents with biological faculties, the ability to cause life activities. Major players included the Islamic philosophers al-Kindi, al-Fârâbi, Ibn Sinâ, and Ibn Rushd and the Jewish theologian Maimonides. They questioned the life and ensoulment of plants as well as the persistence of human individuality after death. Nonetheless the language of vegetable souls and resurrection remained common. Animal souls continued to be taken for granted, including aspects of both will and reason.

Vegetable Individuality: The Organismal Self

Springer eBooks, 2018

Organismal unity has always been a third thing, between physics and mind. In the twentieth centur... more Organismal unity has always been a third thing, between physics and mind. In the twentieth century, biologists proposed regulation and replication, reflecting nutrition and reproduction, as defining features of life. Recent discoveries show that the two categories yield different answers when we try to identify individuals. The mechanical philosophy and Darwinian population thinking lead to pragmatic, non-exclusive and context dependent definitions of organisms: a biological nominalism. Such arbitrary formal causes create a departure from Aristotle. The intertwined character of organisms makes linguistic and conceptual clarity important. Godfrey-Smith’s Darwinian populations and Millikan’s historical kinds provide insights into how to find linguistic and conceptual clarity amidst the overlapping processes.

Invisible Seeds: Life-Concepts in Augustine

Augustine of Hippo marks the boundary between the Hellenistic world and medieval Christendom. He ... more Augustine of Hippo marks the boundary between the Hellenistic world and medieval Christendom. He created a new Platonic synthesis of Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy, characterized by a dual creation, hylomorphic biology, and a subjective human soul with both intellect and will. Augustine supported the idea of animal souls and some equivalent organizing principle in plants. His interpretation of invisible seeds and kinds within the invisible creation set up future problems for interpreting biological kinds. His formulation of will and intellect along new, subjective lines changed epistemology and ideas of human identity. It also set the groundwork for Cartesian dualism.

Life Divided: Vegetable Life in Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas crafted a new theory of life and souls. Expanding on the divided philosophy of Alb... more Thomas Aquinas crafted a new theory of life and souls. Expanding on the divided philosophy of Albert the Great, he pushed humans and vegetables farther apart. Human souls took on the subjective and spiritual life of Augustine in addition to the rational life of Plato and Aristotle. Vegetable and animal souls followed the path of Aristotle’s biological activities. Commonly understood as mortal, material, or lower souls by this time, they shifted from processes in-action and in-fulfillment to proto-agents with biological faculties. The resulting awkward hybrid emphasizes human transcendence and vegetable physicality but leaves brute animals floating in between. Aquinas also spoke of humans as essentially embodied, but capable of existing immaterially between death and resurrection.

Three Causes in One: Biological Explanation in Aristotle

Aristotle shifted the discussion from biological motivators to biological activities. His four ca... more Aristotle shifted the discussion from biological motivators to biological activities. His four causes formed a foundation for all explanations. “Material causes” speak to composition; “formal causes” speak to shape, but also interactions with the surrounding world; “efficient causes” speak to external and accidental influences; and “final causes” speak to “that for the sake of which” a thing occurs. When the last three coincide, they can be called a soul. Aristotle used souls to explain the biological activities: nutrition, reproduction, sensation, locomotion, and reason. Although causes, souls, and activities were reimagined in the Middle Ages, they are, in their original forms, surprisingly compatible with scientific accounts.

Ghosts in the Machine: Vitalism

Questions of organismal unity and purpose remained problematic under the mechanical paradigm. Alt... more Questions of organismal unity and purpose remained problematic under the mechanical paradigm. Alternative paradigms emerged. Though wildly different, they all attracted the label vitalism for rejecting aspects of the mechanical philosophy. Animists such as Stahl simply opted for a return to vegetable souls. Van Helmont and other iatrochemists sought life-specific material and efficient causes. Self-identified vitalists proposed vital spirits and forces, including archei, sensibilite, mesmerism, galvanism, elan vital, and entelechy. German Idealists, meanwhile, pushed for more subjectivity and spirituality within the non-human world. They have largely been rejected and labelled “vitalist” because their position do not fit with current ideas of mechanism, but many were important to the later development of biology. A critical distinction hangs on how we use the term “nature.”

“Vegetables” Versus Modern Plants

By removing ideas of progress, Darwin turned the ladder of life into a branching tree. As species... more By removing ideas of progress, Darwin turned the ladder of life into a branching tree. As species diverged under natural selection, life became more diverse. There is not just one trajectory, but many. The term “plant” ceased to mean the lower portion of the scala naturae, the chain of life, and started to reflect one branch among many. Biological classification expanded beyond plants and animals to include fungi, protists, bacteria, and archaebacteria. The traditional category of vegetable life applies to them all. The modern category, Plantae, refers to many-celled eukaryotes with cell walls and chloroplasts. Many members of the Plantae receive, store, and “act” on signals from their environment, aligning them with the traditional animal life-concept. This makes ethical analysis more challenging.

The Same and Different: Early Theories of Evolution

Springer eBooks, 2018

In the eighteenth century, evolution began to fill the gap left by vegetable souls. The first bro... more In the eighteenth century, evolution began to fill the gap left by vegetable souls. The first broadly evolutionary theories reimagined the ladder of nature, turning an eternal movement into a process in history. Thus, early theories were progressive and only roughly mechanical. Locke and Comte blazed a trail with reforms in epistemology, Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin experimented with progressive concepts of evolution. Four key developments set the groundwork for evolution by natural selection: a distinction between bodies and persons, a permissive view of mechanical explanations, a reintegration of vegetable and animal life, and an acceptance that species can change with time. Nutrition and reproduction remained the most important activities for understanding life.

What Can Be Revived (and What Cannot)

How do we account for the unusual organization and freedom of living things? Today's philosophers... more How do we account for the unusual organization and freedom of living things? Today's philosophers and biologists think of a theory or definition of life. For most of European history, it was a question of vegetable souls or vegetable natures. Nutritive souls, proposed by Aristotle, were the most popular theory. In the wake of the mechanical philosophy and natural science, these accounts lost their cogency, or perhaps we lost a language for making sense of them. In either case, new theories of life arose, centered on metabolism and evolution by natural selection. Many have argued that we do not need a theory of life or that we must wait for one to emerge. I propose a more active approach (Mix 2015). As we look for life in space, investigate the origins of life on Earth, and explore the connections between all living things, we must learn to be clear about what we mean when we use the word, "life." The term cuts a broad swath in biological and social sciences as well as the arts and humanities. We can benefit across fields from a clearer articulation of how we think about life as well as the beginning, end, and quality of individual lives. Biologists, in particular, should either commit to a particular theory or identify the contingency and diversity of working principles. Having said that, a clear articulation need not require discrete boundaries. Chemistry and physics have benefited immensely from probabilistic descriptions of events: unambiguous statements about ambiguous aspects of reality. Our understanding suffers when we attempt to shoehorn a messy reality into neat categories. It also suffers when we persist in using CHAPTER 20

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Animal Individuality: The Subjective Self

Animal and subjective life-concepts invoke an interiority not found in biological nominalism, ali... more Animal and subjective life-concepts invoke an interiority not found in biological nominalism, aligned with neither physical nor organismic interiority. The traditional conceptions of sensation and locomotion invoked both a vegetable front end, invariably embodied, and something else, a back end where qualia and will might reside. Depending on our definition, modern biology either gives these traits to all organisms or requires numerous “animal” categories for different processes across the phylogenetic spectrum. More problematically, all biological processes, including sensation and locomotion, can be associated with biological consortia as well as biological individuals. Evolutionary proposals, such as those by Millikan and Dennett, and panpsychist proposals, such as those by Mathews, may suggests a way forward by renegotiating Cartesian categories of mind and matter.