ABSTRACT
In spite of all of its ontological shortcomings, the Neoplatonists urge us to see the sensible world as a success story. It is, after all, the best possible image of its intelligible model. They are fully aware, however, that this cosmic optimism could only be justified with reference to evidence from natural phenomena. Accordingly, the Neoplatonists concern themselves with showing how a wide variety of natural phenomena are best understood in terms of causation by higher principles at work here in the sensible world. As we have now seen, their interest in explaining natural phenomena extends well beyond the celestial spheres and carries them all the way down to the marshy fields of biology. Here their aims include showing that teleological processes are at work in embryology and that the overwhelming majority of an offspring’s physical features could be accounted for by the activity of corresponding form-principles. The countless distinguishing features that we easily observe among different human beings are not the chance result of matter’s overcoming a single form-principle common to all individual human beings; rather, these features are themselves instances of the successful activity of myriad intelligible principles acting in the sensible world. Yet this optimistic view of the intelligible world’s influence over the sensible must confront the fact that not all cases of biological reproduction appear to turn out successfully, even if the majority of cases do. To be sure, teratogenesis poses difficulties not just for Neoplatonists but for the entire tradition of teleological embryology to which Neoplatonic embryology belongs, 1 though these difficulties may be seen as taking on a new urgency in a Neoplatonic setting, given the added importance they attach to intelligible principles ruling the sensible world.
