Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

260 Aristotle and his schoolAmong the relatively few scholars who have occupied themselves withthis work (on which the last monograph dates from 1911), 3 it has beenthe source of continuous disagreement. Apart from numerous difficultiesof textual transmission and interpretation of particular passages, the mainissues are (1) whether the work is by Aristotle and, if so, (2) whether itis part of History of Animals as it was originally intended by Aristotle ornot, 4 or, if not, (3) what the original status of the work was and how itcame to be added to History of Animals in the later tradition. From theeighteenth century onwards the view that the work is spurious seems tohave been dominant, 5 with alleged doctrinal differences between ‘Hist. an.10’ and other writings of Aristotle, especially Generation of Animals (Gen.an.), constituting the main obstacles to accepting the text as genuine. Theseconcerned issues such as the idea that the female contributes seed of herown to produce offspring, the idea that pneuma draws in the mixture ofmale and female seed into the uterus, the idea that heat is responsible forthe formation of moles, and the idea that multiple offspring from onesingle pregnancy is to be explained by reference to different places of theuterus receiving different portions of the seed – views seemingly advocatedin ‘Hist. an. 10’ but explicitly rejected in Generation of Animals. In addition,arguments concerning style (or rather, lack of style), syntax and vocabulary,as well as the observation of a striking number of similarities with someof the Hippocratic writings, have been adduced to demonstrate that thiswork could not possibly be by Aristotle and was more likely to have beenwritten by a medical author.This view has in recent times been challenged by at least two distinguishedAristotelian scholars. J. Tricot conceded that there were differencesof doctrine, but argued that ‘Hist. an. 10’ represents an earlier stage ofAristotle’s thinking on the matter which he later abandoned and criticallyreviewed in Generation of Animals. 6 More recently, David Balme has arguedthat the accounts in Generation of Animals and ‘Hist. an. 10’ do notcontradict each other and that there is no reason to assume that the latterwork is not by Aristotle – indeed, Balme claimed that our interpretation3 Rudberg (1911). For some briefer discussions see Aubert and Wimmer (1868) 6; Dittmeyer (1907)v; Gigon (1983) 502–3; Louis (1964–9) vol. i, xxxi–xxxii and vol. iii, 147–55; Peck (1965) lvi–lviii;Poschenrieder (1887) 33; Rose (1854) 172ff.; Spengel (1842); Zeller (1879) 408ff.4 It should be noted that the question of ‘belonging to History of Animals’ does not necessarily dependon the book’s Aristotelian authorship being settled, if one is prepared to consider the possibility (oncepopular in scholarship but currently out of fashion) that History of Animals was, from the start, awork of multiple authorship.5 For a survey of older scholarship see Balme (1985) 191–206.6 Tricot (1957) 17.