Premodern naturalists could not separate living from nonliving things on shared structures

Evidence

In general, the Renaissance view was that all things were permeated by life, there being no adequate method by which to designate the inanimate from the animate. It was difficult to differentiate between living and nonliving things, because of the resemblance in structures. Like plants and animals, minerals and gems were filled with small pores, tublets, cavities, and streaks, through which they seemed to nourish themselves. Crystalline salts were compared to plant forms, but criteria by which to differentiate the living from the nonliving could not successfully be formulated. This was due not only to the vitalistic framework of the period but to striking similarities between them. Minerals were thought to possess a lesser degree of the vegetative soul, because they had the capacity for medicinal action and often took the form of various parts of plants. By virtue of the vegetative soul, minerals and stones grew in the human body, in animal bodies, within trees, in the air and water, and on the earth’s surface in the open country. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 157

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Premodern thinkers believed metals grew underground like living plants from seeds — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 165