Abstract
Was Aristotle the ‘father’ and founder of the epigenesis doctrine? Historically, I will argue, this question must be answered with ‘no’. Aristotle did not initiate and had no access to a debate that described itself in terms of ‘epigenesis’ and ‘preformation’, and thus cannot be considered the ‘father’ or founder of the epigenesis-preformation controversy in a literal sense. But many ancient accounts of reproduction and embryological development contain analogies to what early modern scientist called ‘epigenesis’ and ‘preformation’, and, in this analogous sense, Aristotle can be considered a precursor of the epigenesis-preformation controversy. But is Aristotle’s position actually epigenetic (in this analogous sense), as most of the traditional interpreters hold, or preformationist, as some of the recent scholars believe? I will argue against the one-sidedness of both readings that Aristotle’s account of reproduction and heredity contains mainly epigenetic, but also a few preformationist characteristics. Whereas, for instance, Aristotle’s idea of a successive development of the embryo’s parts is doubtlessly epigenetic, Aristotle’s idea that the development of the embryo is an actualization and enlargement of potential parts, which are simultaneously present in the semen, can be considered a preformationist feature.
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Notes
Τὰ οὖν ἄλλα πῶς; ἢ γάρ τοι ἅμα πάντα γίγνεται τὰ μόρια, οἷον καρδία πλεύμων ἧπαρ ὀφθαλμὸς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον, ἤ ἐφεξῆς, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς καλουμένοις Ὀρφέως ἕπεσιν. ἐκεῖ γὰρ ὁμοίως φησὶ γὶγνεσθαι τὸ ζῷον τῇ τοῦ δικτύου πλοκῇ.
The terms ‘simultaneous’ (ἅμα) and ‘successive’ (ἐφεξῆς) also cannot, or at least cannot directly, be considered Greek roots of the English terms ‘epigenesis’ or ‘preformation’. While the term ‘epigenesis’ itself contains the Latinized Greek terms ‘ἐπί’ (on top of; above, over, on, in addition to), and ‘γένεσις’ (origin, source, manner of birth, creation), the term ‘preformation’ is deduced from Latin ‘pre’ (before, in front) and ‘formatio’ (the process of giving or achieving shape or form).
Harvey (1651 in 1965, Lat. 154, Engl. 334; see also Lat. 155–156, Engl. 336–337) defines the “method of epigenesis” as follows: “Some, out of a material previously concocted, and that has already attained its bulk, receive their forms and transfigurations; and all their parts are fashioned simultaneously, each with its distinctive characteristic, by the process called metamorphosis, and in this way a perfect animal is at once born; on the other hand, there are some in which one part is made before another, and then from the same material, afterwards receive at once nutrition, bulk, and form: that is to say, they have some parts made before, some after others, and these are at the same time increased in size and altered in form. The structure of these animals commences from some one part as its nucleus and origin, by the instrumentality of which the rest of the limbs are joined on, and this we say takes place by the method of epigenesis, namely by degrees, part after part; and this is, in preference to the other mode, generation properly so called.” (“Quaedam ex materia prius coctâ & auctâ formantur, & transfigurantur; omnesque partes simul per metamorphôsin oriuntur, ac distinguuntur, perfectúmque animal enascitur: quædam verò, factâ parte unâ præ altera, ex eadem materiâ postea simul nutriuntur, augentur, & formantur: habent scil. partes alias aliis priores ac posteriores, eodémque tempore & augentur, & formantur. Horum fabrica à parte aliquâ, tanquam ab origine, incipit; ejúsque ope reliquia membra adsciscuntur: atque hæc per epigenesin dicimus; sensim nempe, partem post partem; éstque istæc, præ altera, propriè dicta generatio.”) Lennox (2006) has written one of the most careful comparisons of Aristotle’s and Harvey’s accounts of animal generation, though he does not focus on epigenetic characteristics in both accounts.
Föllinger (1996, 62) thinks that epigenetic ideas are present in Plato’s Timaeus when Timaeus compares the generation and development of an embryo to the plucking of a fruit from a tree, which is then sown in the female womb as in a field. This fruit, first unseen due to its smallness and lack of form, gets separated and matured within, and is finally brought out in order to complete the generation of the embryo.
In DK 59B4 Anaxagoras notes: “And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are many things of all sorts in everything that is being aggregated, seeds of all things with all sorts of shapes and colours and tastes…”; and in DK 59B10 he asks: “How could hair come from what is not hair or flesh from what is not flesh”? (I am quoting the fragments according to Diels and Kranz 2004). Lesky (1950, 1275) writes in view of these embryological remarks that at this point, for the first time in ancient natural science, the idea of preformation was formulated clearly and unambiguously.
According to popular versions of this myth, Athena’s father Zeus once lay with Metis. But Zeus immediately feared the consequences of his act since Uranus and Gaia had prophesied that Metis would bear children more powerful than Zeus himself. In order to prevent this, Zeus swallowed Metis, but Metis had already conceived. Zeus experienced an enormous headache, and Hephaestus cleaved Zeus’s head with an axe. Athena leaped from Zeus’s forehead, fully grown and armed. See further discussions of this passage in Peck’s (1942, 372–373) translation of Aristotle’s the GA, and in Needham (1959, 43–46). Peck and Needham support the claim that this doctrine was of Egyptian origin.
See Lesky (1950, 1233–1254) for the encephalo-myelogenic doctrine (“enkephalo-myelogene Samenlehre”), Lesky (1950, 1255–1262) for the warmth-theory (“Wärmetheorie”), Lesky (1950, 1263–1293) for the right-left theory (“Rechts-Links-Theorie”), Lesky (1950, 1294–1343) for the pangenesis doctrine (“Pangenesislehre”), and Lesky (1950, 1344–1417) for the haematogenous doctrine (“hämatogene Samenlehre”).
Most of the Empedoclean fragments on reproduction confirm this classification, though some do not, for instance DK 31B92.
Fragment DK 28B18, however, supports an explanation of inherited resemblances that cannot be easily connected to Parmenides’s right-left theory.
Lesky (1950, 1306) thinks that the “bisexual potency of the semen as a foundation of the inheritance of the sexes (bisexuelle Potenz des Keimgutes als Grundlage der Geschlechtsvererbung)” was an important step in the history of ancient embryology, since it for the first time allowed the explanation of multiple and crossed inherited resemblances.
One could also mention Connell’s (2016, 292–324) discussion of Aristotle’s explanation of inherited resemblances in relation to Galen’s and pangenetic alternatives.
Föllinger (1996, 163) writes: “Die Entwicklung des Embryos stellt sich Aristoteles epigenetisch vor (GA 2.1.734b13–15): Die Körperteile entstehen, mit dem Herz beginnend, sukzessive, indem jeweils das vorher entstehende die Bewegung an das nächst entstehende weiterleitet. Aristoteles gebraucht den Vergleich mit bestimmten Automaten, um den Vorgang der Embryonalentwicklung anschaulich zu machen”.
I have conducted a comprehensive analysis of preformationist and epigenetic early modern accounts of reproduction in Goy (2017, 288–385).
I think that Lesky (1950, 1364–1365) already tends towards such a more complex view. In some of her claims she seems to support the traditional epigenetic interpretation of Aristotle’s account. But she also points to the fact that the embryo contains all dispositions of its future parts in potency though no actually, which, I guess, is a preformationist idea.
See Goy (2017, 288–308). Marcellus Malpighi (1628–1694), Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), Charles Bonnet (1720–1793), and Abbé Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) defended ovistic variants of preformation theories in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Animalculistic interpretations of preformation appeared in the second half of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, most prominently defended by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656–1725), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716).
For instance, Needham (1959, 48–49) writes with regard to GA 2.1.734b20–735a4: “Thus Aristotle… decided against preformation and pictured at one and the same time the unformed catamenia as containing a kind of clockwork mechanism which, once set in motion, would inevitably produce the finished embryo, and also as an inchoate substance on which the seminal essence should act like a swordmaker producing a sword according to the motions of natural art. The two ideas are not completely reconciled in Aristotle”.
In GA 1.19.726b15–19 Aristotle writes, that the male and female “semen of the hand or of the face or of the whole animal really is hand or face or a whole animal though in an undifferenciated way; in other words, what each of those is in actuality, such the semen is potentially,… because it has some dynamis within itself”. What precisely is Aristotle’s view on the male and female as potentialities or dynameis? Aristotle characterizes the potentiality of the male semen as a potentiality to form, to shape, to animate, to give a particular character, or to move. In GA 1.21.730a14–15 he writes: the “semen of the male…; in virtue of the dynamis which it contains… causes the material and nourishment in the female to take on a particular character”. In GA 2.1.734b19–24 he notes: “[w]hatever is formed… by Nature…, say X, is formed by something which is X in actuality out of something which is X potentially. Now semen, and the movement and principle which it contains, are such that, as the movement ceases, each one of the parts gets formed and acquires Soul”. The potentiality of the female semen Aristotle characterizes as a potentiality of matter, since it contains the material parts of the offspring potentially, but not in actuality. The “female’s contribution”, Aristotle says, “is a residue” that “contains all the parts of the body potentially, though none in actuality” (GA 2.3.737a22–24). The “residue provided by the female is potentially the same in character as the future animal will be, according to its nature; and although none of the parts is present in actuality in that residue, they are all there potentially” (GA 2.4.740b18–20).
The preformationist aspects in Aristotle’s account that I focus on are not identical with what Blundell (1995), Bleier (1984), or Elsthain (1981) have identified as preformationist elements in Aristotle. Blundell, Bleier, and Elsthain focus on the passivity and container-like function of the female in animal generation. But Aristotle neither considers the female entirely passive (though some isolated passages seem to support this view, e.g. GA 1.21.729b12–14) nor is the view that the female serves as a container for the embryo most central (though Aristotle mentions it at some points, e.g. GA 1.21.726b1). The important aspect of the female in reproduction is that its menses is the source of the embryo’s potential matter, which, beside the potential form, provided by the male, is one of the two essential components of an embryo as a particular substance.
See Goy (2017, 315–344). Among the defenders of the mechanical variant of epigenesis were Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759), Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), and John Turberville Needham (1713–1781). The vitalistic direction of epigenetic theories was represented by Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734–1794) and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840).
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Goy, I. Was Aristotle the ‘father’ of the epigenesis doctrine?. HPLS 40, 28 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0193-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0193-2