This book paints a flowing picture of the relationship beween life and nature, through the evolution of a word physiology. Today, it denotes a scientific discipline at the intersection of biology and medicine, signifying the -study of life-. Yet, physiology manifests a split personality in the course of history. It came down to us from the ancient Greeks, where it represented the -study of nature-, or -natural philosophy- the precursor of modern-day -science-. Physiology originates from an older Greek root, physis meaning -nature- itself that stretches far back to the birth of Greek thought....

Baroque novels focus on the psychology of love, while love in the context of nature is the subject of the pastoral genre. Introducing animals to such texts proves unexpectedly challenging. The inclusion of pets in the artistic representation involves a reversal of scale and various modes of comedy, including socio-political satire. At a time when some writers fantasize that children can be born of a human-animal couple, or question the degree of free will and physiological determinism influencing human or animal actions, scientific and philosophical enquiries threaten to reduce the whole...