Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle On Sterility 265For we can then appreciate that ‘Hist. an. 10’ does not intend to give acomprehensive, theoretically satisfactory account of reproduction, and wecan see why it discusses a number of factors that are supplementary to, andhence not envisaged in, the account of Generation of Animals.This brings us to a further methodological point. Even if one is reluctantto believe that Aristotle wrote medical works, the special nature of ‘Hist. an.10’ makes it pertinent to ask what sort of thing we can reasonably expect theauthor to say. For the doctrinal divergences it shows are related to a patternthat can be perceived in Aristotle’s works as a whole. 27 When Aristotle isdealing with deviations, irregularities, exceptions to the rule, deformations,errors or disturbances of certain vital functions, or variations in the degree ofperfection with which these vital functions are performed – in short, aspectsof a subject which are typically suitable to be dealt with in an appendix, orin a collection such as the Problemata 28 – he often makes use of explanatoryfactors in respect of which it is not easy to see how and where they are tobe accommodated within his account of the standard procedure. 29 Oftenwhen Aristotle focuses on such special, ‘technical’ aspects of a topic whichhe has first discussed in general outline and without qualification, apparentdiscrepancies of doctrine tend to occur, even within one and the sametreatise. For example, in Generation of Animals itself, 30 generation withoutqualification is explained in books 1–2 as the male seed acting as the form andthe female menstrual blood as the matter, but in book 4 attention is given towhat the offspring will be like, whether it will be male or female, whether itwill resemble the father or the mother, or the grandfather or grandmotherfrom the father’s side or the mother’s side, and so on. In the explanation ofthese variations a number of additional factors are brought into the picture,some of which point to a much more active role of the female part than thesheer passivity the first two books seemed to suggest (e.g., different degrees27 On this pattern, see ch. 7 above, pp. 211 ff.28 It may not be a coincidence that there are more cases of scientific writing in antiquity where the finalbook or part of a work seems rather different in nature and subject matter from the rest (cf. book 4of the Meteorologica; book 9 of Theophrastus’ Historia plantarum; and the final parts of Hippocraticworks such as On the Sacred Disease, On Fleshes, On Ancient Medicine). However, if ‘Hist. an. 10’does not belong to History of Animals, as I am claiming, this is irrelevant to the present argument.On the Problemata see below.29 Two examples may suffice. Aristotle’s remarks (in On the Heavens and the Meteorologica) aboutatmospheric conditions influencing keenness of sight apparently presuppose an emanatory theoryof vision which is difficult to accommodate within his ‘canonical’ view of normal visual perception asexpounded in De an. 2.5. And his remarks about various bodily factors being responsible for differentdegrees of human intelligence seem difficult to reconcile with his ‘orthodox’ view that thinking is anon-corporeal process. For a more elaborate discussion of these problems see ch. 7 above.30 On this well-known problem see Lesky (1951) 1358–79; Düring (1966) 533; Föllinger (1996) 171–9.For a recent discussion see Bien (1998) 3–17.