Aristotle on the Mechanism of Inheritance

Abstract

In this paper I address an important question in Aristotle's biology, What are the causal mechanisms behind the transmission of biological form? Aristotle's answer to this question, I argue, is found in Generation of Animals Book 4 in connection with his investigation into the phenomenon of inheritance. There we are told that an organism's reproductive material contains a set of ''movements'' which are derived from the various ''potentials'' of its nature (the internal principle of change that initiates and controls development). These ''movements,'' I suggest, function as specialized vehicles for communicating the parts of the parent's heritable form during the act of reproduction. After exploring the details of this mechanism, I then take up Aristotle's theory of inheritance proper. At the heart of the theory are three general principles (or 'laws') that govern the interactions between the maternal and paternal movements, the outcome of which determines the pattern of inheritance for the offspring. Although this paper is primarily aimed at providing a detailed analysis of Aristotle's account of inheritance, the results of that analysis have implications for other areas of Aristotle's biology. One of the most interesting of these is the question of whether Aristotle's biology is anti-evolutionary (as traditionally assumed) or whether (as I argue) it leaves room for a theory of evolution by natural selection, even if Aristotle himself never took that step.

Genetic Bases of Stuttering: The State of the Art, 2011

“…That familial stuttering can be extensive is seen in the Ambrose et al [14] sample of 69 preschool children who stuttered, 45% of whom had afflicted relatives in the im- 1 In genetic studies that investigate multiple family members, the term proband is used to denote an individual affected with the disorder of interest by which the rest of the family is referenced and identified. mediate family (parents and siblings), increasing to 71% when members of the extended family (parents, siblings, grandparents) were included.…”

“…In ancient Greece, Aristotle offered that inheritance is transmitted through the father's semen and the mother's menstrual blood that are mixed in the womb. The mother provides unformed matter that the semen then forms into an individual of some determined kind [1] . Genetics , the scientific study of genes, what they are and how they control heredity characteristics in living organisms, however, began much later with the groundbreaking work of Gregor Mendel [2] on pea breeding experiments that took place in the middle of the 19th century.…”

Embryology

“…then it posits powers (dynameis) in both the male seed and the female menses, corresponding not only to their own features and parts but also to those of their ancestors, and through a complex process of domination (krasis) and relapse (lusis), these powers determine the ultimate appearance and sex of the offspring, thus achieving the goal of human repro duction (see, e.g., Cooper 1988 andhenry 2006). this does indeed seem to be aristotle's view insofar as he describes the female offspring as "a deformity, as it were" (hōsper anapērian: GA 775a15-16; cf.…”

The Nature of Race: the Genealogy of the Concept and the Biological Construct’s Contemporaneous Utility

“…These formal natures did not exist independent of the species but represented the structural designs of the different groups, designs which were realized in one generation and then transmitted to the next. There is some debate as to the precise mechanism by which these structural designs were thought to remain stable across generations, but generally the idea was that substantive deviations from the species form were maladaptive relative to the species' way of life; thus, such deviations were eliminated across generations, allowing for a constant refreshing of the species form (Lennox, 2001;Henry, 2006).…”