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Abstract
In this paper, I consider points of intersection between the Aristotelian and the Galenic notions of ‘power of the seed’ and some of the key issues and key concepts developed within the power-structuralism paradigm and try to understand whether, and to what extent, the conceptual lens provided by the power-structuralism hypothesis may help us (1) to shed fresh light on aspects of both the Aristotelian and the Galenic theory of the seed, which are still unclear or highly controversial, like the role played by the female in the generative process; (2) to better understand how much the Aristotelian and the Galenic theories of the seed have in common and, on the other hand, to what extent and in what regard they differ when it comes to considering the metaphysics of powers, which both theories are grounded upon. Specifically, I explore how far Marmodoro's theory of ‘power-structuralism ontology’ can help us to make better sense of this metaphysics. I suggest that this theory helps us to recognize, below the surface of Aristotle's apparently sharp contrast between active and passive powers in embryology, an implicit concept of shared activity. This concept is more explicitly found in Galen's notion of dynamis; it is clear that, for Galen, embryology depends on the combination of two active powers rather than of one which acts and the other which is acted upon.
Notes
164, 4–8 De Lacy CMG = IV, 512 K (translated by De Lacy).
2Galen speaks, perhaps somewhat anachronistically, of a drastikē archē.
3This is for Galen the ‘efficient’ (poietikē) power.
4Hipp. De nat. pueri 22 (p. 200, 12–202, 24 Giorgianni = p. 68, 19–70, 5 Joly = VII, 514–516 Littré). On this passage, see Miller, ‘Dynamis and the Seeds’, 285–9.
5For a comprehensive view of the status quaestionis of the theory of power structuralism, see the contributions collected in Marmodoro, Metaphysics of Powers.
6I find very convincing the way in which the ‘transmission of form’ from (and by) the sperm to the menstrual blood is explained by Marmodoro, Potentiality:
There is no homunculus-form that is transmitted from the parent to the offspring. There are only motions transmitted from the parent to the menstrual fluids by the sperm that is implanted in them; the heat in the parent's sperm generates the motions in the fluids, which gradually shape the embryo [ … ] The resulting change is as if the sperm transferred a form onto the menstrual fluids, which en-formed them and shaped them into an embryo.
7See I, 20, 729 a10.
8On the distinction in Aristotle between ‘being in actuality’ and ‘being in capacity’, see among others Menn, ‘The Origins’; Beere, Doing and Being, 155–67 and 231–60 (with a focus on Metaphysics Θ, chaps 6 and 7).
9The male and the female are distinguished by a certain ability and inability (dynamei tini kai adynamia). Male is that which is able to concoct, to cause to take shape, and to discharge, semen possessing the ‘principle’ of the ‘form’; and by ‘principle’ I do not mean that sort of principle out of which, as out of matter, an offspring is formed belonging to the same kind as its parent, but I mean the proximate motive principle, whether it is able to act thus in itself or in something else. Female is that which receives the semen, but is unable to cause semen to take shape or to discharge it. And all concoction works by means of heat. Assuming the truth of these two statements, it follows of necessity that male animals are hotter than female ones, since it is on account of coldness and inability (adynamia) that the female is more abundant in blood in certain regions of the body. And this abundance of blood is a piece of evidence which goes to prove the opposite of the view held by some people, who suppose that the female must be hotter than the male, on account of the discharge of the menstrual fluid: blood, they argue, is hot, so that which has more blood in it is hotter.
10Let us assume then that ‘the male’ is a principle and is causal in its nature; that a male is male in virtue of a particular ability, and a female is a female in virtue of a particular inability; that the line of determination between the ability and inability is whether a thing effects or does not effect concoction of the ultimate nourishment (in blooded animals this is known as blood, in the bloodless ones it is the counterpart of blood); that the reason for this lies in the principle, i.e., in the part of the body which possesses the principle of the natural heat. From this it follows of necessity that, in the blooded animals, a heart must take shape and that the creature formed is to be either male or female, and, in other kinds which have male and female sexes, the counterpart of the heart.
11On the ‘medical use’ of the notion of dynamis in the Hippocratic treatises On Ancient Medicine and De victu, see Miller, ‘Dynamis and Physis’ and ‘The Concept of Dynamis’.
12According to Peck, ‘Aristotle’, LI, in the Hippocratic corpus and in Plato's Timaeus
dynamis was the old technical term for the simplest sorts of matter, i.e., for what came later to be called stoicheia. Dynamis was however applied exclusively to substances of a particular class, viz., to hygron, to xēron, to thermon, to psychron, to pikron, to gluku, to drimu. In the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine these substances are regarded as being the constituents both of the body and of its foods.
13All the passages of Aristotle's GA are quoted in Peck's English translation.
14For a definition of ‘powers’, see Marmodoro, ‘Do Powers Need Powers’, 339: ‘Powers are entities that are in a state of “readiness for action”; given appropriate circumstances they interact with their environment’.
15Cf. II, 1, 713 b19.
16Cf. GA IV, 1, 763 b23: ‘Since, however, in the most perfect of them the male and the female are separate, and we hold that these dynameis are “principles” of all animals and plants’.
17On Aristotle's notions of ‘power’ and ‘potentiality’ and his distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ powers, see Witt, Ways of Being, 38–58.
18Hence it is through this that the male effects copulation with the female, since if the male discharges anything, be it semen, or some part, or some other substance (eite allēn tina dynamin), he must of necessity unite with the female through the passage which leads to the uterus.
19Relief is obtained too when other residues are got rid of in company with the semen; in such cases what is emitted is not merely semen, but there are other substances (heterai memigmenai dynameis) which come away at the same time mixed up with it.
20‘Hence it is clear both that the semen possesses Soul, and that it is Soul potentially’.
21‘We have now determined in what sense fetations and semen have soul and in what sense they have not. They have soul potentially but not in actuality’.
22. On the notion of pneuma within the frame of the Aristotelian theory of the seed, see Bos, ‘Pneuma and Ether’; Freudenthal, Aristotle's Theory; Solmsen, ‘The vital heat’; Peck, Aristotle.
23On ‘matter’ and ‘form’ in Aristotle as ‘gender notions’, see Soardi, Le rappresentazioni del femminile.
24The kinesis, which the female matter is capable of, is of the kind of ‘alteration’.
25In Categories 9 a14–27, Aristotle refers to power and lack of power as falling into the category of quality:
Another sort of quality is that in virtue of which, for example, we call men good boxers or runners, or healthy or sickly: in fact it includes all those terms which refer to inborn capacity or incapacity. Such things are not predicated of a person in virtue of his disposition, but in virtue of his inborn capacity or incapacity to do something with ease or to avoid defeat of any kind. Persons are called good boxers or good runners, not in virtue of such and such a disposition, but in virtue of an inborn capacity to accomplish something with ease. Men are called healthy in virtue of the inborn capacity of easy resistance to those unhealthy influences that may ordinarily arise; unhealthy, in virtue of the lack of this capacity. Similarly with regard to softness and hardness. Hardness is predicated of a thing because it has that capacity of resistance which enables it to withstand disintegration; softness, again, is predicated of a thing by reason of the lack of that capacity.
26Cf. Categories 6b28–30 and 7b6–22. On Aristotle's notion of relativeness of powers, see Marmodoro, ‘Aristotelian Powers’ and ‘Potentiality’.
27This and the other passages of Galen's De semine are quoted in De Lacy's English translation.
28See 729b13–15, 740b22–23, 741a13, 742a25.
29See 723b29, 735a28, 738b21, 766a15, 771b22, 772b31 (dēmiourgoun); 730b2 and 767a19 (dēmiourgoumenon).
30See 711a18, 731a24, 755a20.
31 De semine, II.5 (196, 13 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 642, 2).
32 De semine, I.8 (92, 3 De Lacy = K. 4, 540, 17).
33 De semine, II.1 (154, 5 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 602, 16).
34 De semine, I.13 (110, 27 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 560, 2).
35 De semine, I.11 (104, 7 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 553, 3).
36 De semine, I.4 (70, 24 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 519, 17):
some of the insects, he [Aristotle] says are of this description, the female inserting a member into the male, remaining in contact with him for a rather long time, and receiving in the conjunction nothing corporeal, but only the power that shapes and gives to shape its form.The verb eidopoien is largely attested in the commentary tradition on Aristotle's works (the TLG counts 127 occurrences both in Alexander of Aphrodisias and in Philoponus, just to make two examples), where it is mainly used, sometime in conjunction with other verbs like diaplattein, to refer to the formal/active cause as opposed to the hylikon as the material/passive principle of causation.
37On Galen's treatment of the notion of dynamis, see Hankinson, ‘Philosophy of Nature’, 223–5; Debru, ‘Physiology’, 266–71; Tieleman, ‘Galen's Psychology’, 141–51.
38On Galen's ‘intentional’ teleology, see Hankinson, ‘Galen and the Best’ and Cause and Explanation, 385–402. On Aristotle's ‘immanent’ and ‘unintentional’ natural teleology, see Gotthelf, ‘Aristotle's Conception of Final Casuality’; Hankinson, Cause and Explanation, 140–57; Ransome Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, 159–87.
39Cf. De semine, II.1 (152, 8 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 601, 4): ‘Indeed it would have been much better to trust the visible evidence that the semen of females exists and to inquire by reasoning what its power is’.
40Cf. 164, 12 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 613, 8; 164, 24 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 614, 6; 166, 5 De Lacy CMG = K. 4, 615, 3.