Neoplatonic Nature

TL;DR: Neoplatonism influenced zoophyta, positing emanation from a First Principle. Plants and animals are late stages in the continuum, used to illustrate logic points. Key texts have been lost, but arguments about intermediates and zoophytes' nature remain.

Abstract: Abstract Zoophyta gained a foothold in Neoplatonism, an elaborate synthesis of philosophy, mysticism, and religious practise. Neoplatonists held that the cosmos itself, and all within it, has come about by emanation from an unknowable First Principle. Animals and plants are late and rather lowly stages in the resulting continuum, but philosophers sometimes used them to illustrate points of logic. In Isagoge, Porphyry illustrated how genera are differentiated into species: plant and animal are the species of animate corporeal substance. Porphyry’s students, notably Iamblichus, asked whether intermediates are possible, as nature does not pass directly from opposite to opposite; key texts have been lost, but Dexippus, a disciple of Iamblichus, argued that zoophytes mediate between plants and animals. Ammonius Hermiæ and (even more clearly) John Philoponus went farther, arguing that zoophytes are distinct from animals and plants because they use sense, but do not move from place to place.