When the fruit ripens seed scatters: Notes Towards a History of Motility

Quum fructus maturus semina dispergat. Linnæus, Philosophia Botanica, 1751

1. In The Beginning Was the Verb

In the beginning was the Verb, and the Verb was with God, and the Verb set all things in motion.  More than just any Word (Latin verbum, word) the God who is, was, and shall be a Verb commuted motion of an Absolute form to Relative Motion.  In the universe created of the Verb everything moves; absolutes have no meaning. 

And some things rose and other things fell.  Those which rose remained in constant motion until impeded and of those which fell some acquired spontaneous motion.  These self-moved movers, called motile, include some cells, spores, the quadrupeds, and the bipeds.  The Philosopher studied the motile keenly, since the prime mover and all that had risen remained less accessible to knowledge.  Since the self-moved require the unmoving for motion they must themselves be, he concluded, comprised of a series of both fixed and moving parts at the seat of which is an unmoved mover – the animal soul.  In this way the motile mimic the first mover.

Living things move and they share this characteristic with every other thing; stasis, that is, there can only ever be relative stasis. Movement differs from motility in as much as the latter, in its most fully expressed form, is movement where a purpose that goads, a desire that compels, and a body that advances, converge.

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