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Aristotle on the heart 

Histneur folks,

I just thought I'd follow up my earlier question about whether Aristotle
had a cardiac-ventricular theory of mind with a few quotations. I start
with De anima, then move on to _On the parts of the animals_, and conlcude
with several ofthe minor works. I found these with computer searches ofthe
works cited, so they should be complete (unless otherwise noted).

Make of them what you will. I don't think they favor the idea that
Aristotle held a cardiac-ventricular theory of mind, but I haven't been
able to examine everything he wrote, so there may be passages in other
works that I have missed. If so, I would love to know about them.

Best regards,

Christopher D. Green		office:	(416) 736-2100 ext. 66164
Department of Psychology	FAX:	(416) 736-5814
York University
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3	e-mail: christo@yorku.ca
CANADA

      http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/christo
---------------------------------------------------------------------

In the context of arguing that there may be multiple correct descriptions
of a single event he says in De anima (403b):

"Hence a physicist would define an affection of soul differently
from a dialectician; the latter would define e.g. anger as the appetite
for returning pain for pain, or something like that, while the former
would define it as a boiling of the blood or warm substance [403b]
surrounding the heart."


In the context of assserting that thought and emotion can be regarded as  
"movements," of a sort, without being movements of the psyche per se, he
says in De anima (408b):
 
"We may admit to the full that being pained or pleased, or thinking, are
movements (each of them a 'being moved'), and that the movement is
originated by the soul. For example we may regard anger or fear as such
and such movements of the heart, and thinking as such and such another
movement of that organ, or of some other; these modifications may arise
either from changes of place in certain parts or from qualitative
alterations..." 

In De anima 420b he says (apropos of the ability of the voice to put
meaning into sound): 

"The organ of respiration is the windpipe, and the organ to which this is
related as means to end is the lungs. The latter is the part of the body
by which the temperature of land animals is raised above that of all
others. But what primarily requires the air drawn in by respiration is not
only this but the region surrounding the heart. That is why when animals
breathe the air must penetrate inwards."

In a somewhat obscure passage in which he seems to be claiming that the
mind itself does not have emotion (De anima 432b), he writes:

"...for mind as speculative never thinks what is practicable, it never
says anything about an object to be avoided or pursued, while this
movement is always in something which is avoiding or pursuing an object.
No, not even when it is aware of such an object does it at once enjoin
pursuit or avoidance of it; e.g. the mind often thinks of something
terrifying or pleasant without enjoining the emotion of fear. It is the
heart that is moved (or in the case of a pleasant object some other
part)."

I believe that these are the only references to the heart to be found in
De anima.  

-----

In _On the parts of the animals_ there are many, many references to the
heart. I cannot possible copy them all here, but mostly are purely
anatomical. The ones closest to the present concerns appear in Book II.
In chap. 4 he writes:

"At the same time too great an excess of water makes animals timorous. For
fear chills the body; so that in animals whose heart contains so watery a
mixture the way is prepared for the operation of this emotion. "

In Book II, chap 10 he writes:

"It has, however, already been clearly set forth in the treatise on
Sensation, that it is the region of the heart that constitutes the sensory
centre. There also it was stated that two of the senses, namely touch and
taste, are manifestly in immediate connexion with the heart; and that as
regards the other three, namely hearing, sight, and the centrally placed
sense of smell, it is the character of their sense-organs which causes
them to be lodged as a rule in the head."

Book III, chap 4 contains a long discussion of the "cavities" of the
heart, but it is almost entirely anatomical in nature (except to note
that timorous and cowardly animals have large hearts).  There isn't a
hint, as far as I can tell, of an analogue to the cerebral ventricular
theory.

-------

There appear to be no references to the heart at all in _On memory and
reminiscence_. Some of the other minor works, however, do contain 
references to the heart.

In _On Dreams_ (sorry I don't have the exact page), he writes:

"For when one is asleep, in proportion as most of the blood sinks inwards
to its fountain [the heart], the internal [sensory] movements, some
potential, others actual accompany it inwards."


Near the end of part 2 of _On sense and the sensible_ he writes:

"The organ of touch proper consists of earth, and the faculty of taste is
a particular form of touch. This explains why the sensory organ of both
touch and taste is closely related to the heart. For the heart as being
the hottest of all the bodily parts, is the counterpoise of the brain."


Near the end of Part 2 of _On sleep and sleeplessness_ he writes:

"The next question to be discussed is that of the kind of movement or
action, taking place within their bodies, from which the affection
of waking or sleeping arises in animals....Now, it has been definitely
settled already in another work that sense-perception in animals 
originates ill the same part of the organism in which movement originates.
This locus of origination is one of three determinate loci, viz. that
which lies midway between the head and the abdomen. This is sanguineous
animals is the region of the heart;....and since movement is, in every
animal, attended with some sense-perception, either internal or external,
in the primary organ of sense, [we conclude] accordingly that if sleeping
and waking are affections of this organ, the place in which, or the organ
in which, sleep and waking originate, is self-evident [being that in which
movement and sense-perception originate, viz. the heart]."

There are several other brief mentions of the heart thereafter, but at the
very end of the work, he writes:

"The finest and purest blood is that contained in the head, while the
thickest and most turbid is that in the lower parts. The source of all the
blood is, as has been stated both here and elsewhere, the heart. Now of
the chambers in the heart the central communicates with each of the two
others. Each of the latter again acts as receiver from each, respectively,
of the two vessels, called the 'great' and the 'aorta'. It is in the
central chamber that the [above-mentioned] separation takes place
{between "corporeal" and "purer" blood--cdg}. To go into these matters in
detail would, however, be more properly the business of a different
treatise from the present. Owing to the fact that the blood formed after
the assimilation of food is especially in need of separation, sleep [then
especially] occurs [and lasts] until the purest part of this blood has
been separated off into the upper parts of the body, and the most turbid
into the lower parts. When this has taken place animals awake from sleep,
being released from the heaviness consequent on taking food. We have now
stated the cause of sleeping, viz. that it consists in the recoil by the
corporeal element, upborne by the connatural heat, in a mass upon the
primary sense-organ; we have also stated what sleep is, having shown that
it is a seizure of the primary sense-organ, rendering it unable to
actualize its powers; arising of necessity (for it is impossible for an
animal to exist if the conditions which render it an animal be not
fulfilled), i.e. for the sake of its conservation; since remission of
movement tends to the conservation of animals."
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