Jacob
Schegk
Hiro
HIRAI
The Invisible
Hand of God in Seeds:
Jacob Schegk’s
Theory of Plastic Faculty
in
Early Science and Medicine, 12 (2007), pp. 377-404.
In his
embryological treatise De plastica
seminis facultate (Strasburg, 1580), Jacob Schegk (1511-1587), the
professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Tübingen, developed through
a radical interpretation of the Aristotelian embryology his theory of the
“plastic faculty” (facultas
plastica), whose origin is the Galenic idea of the formative force. The
present study analyses the true nature of this theory, by replacing it in its
own historical and intellectual context, and reveals its unforeseen Neoplatonic
dimension, which namely manifests through his notion of the vehicle of the
soul.
1. Introduction
2. The Plastic Faculty as the Instrument of God
3. The Nature of the Plastic Faculty
4. Is the Plastic logos corporeal or incorporeal?
5. The Divine Vehicle of the Plastic Faculty
6. The Separability of the Divine Vehicle
7. Is the Plastic logos a part of the Soul?
8. Conclusion
Also available in its alternative French version:
La main de Dieu entre l’âme
et la nature :
La théorie de la faculté plastique
de Jacob Schegk
Journal de la Renaissance, 5 (2007), pp. 205-222.