De generatione animalium

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De generatione animalium ( Gr. Περὶ ζῴων γενέσεως, About the origin of animals ) is a in the 4th century BC. Aristotle's scientific writing , which was created in the 2nd century BC , deals with the conception and embryonic development of animals (including humans) and with the theory of heredity .

content

The work ties in with De partibus animalium . It consists of five books. The first book deals with the genital organs, semen and menstruation; the semen is determined to be excretion from the blood. From the male side only an immaterial formative force comes through the seminal fluid; the seed itself does not become a component of the new living being, whose matter is rather contributed exclusively by the maternal side. Aristotle compares the male with a carpenter, the seed with his tools, and the embryo with the worked wood (1.22). The second book deals with conception and the beginning of embryonic development, the diaper ( abortivei ), the order in which the parts of the body originate (the heart arises first) and causes of infertility. The third book deals with the reproduction of egg-laying animals and maggots and also offers reflections on spontaneous generation , of the existence of which Aristotle was convinced. The subjects of the fourth book are the causes of the sex of the embryo, heredity, the duration of gestation or pregnancy and the birth. It also describes anomalies that Aristotle calls monstrosities. This includes not only embryonic malformations, but also other rare incidents such as twins. Even the dissimilarity of a descendant with his parents is a monstrosity for Aristotle. He explains such phenomena causally. Book V examines the individually variable properties that are not explained by final causes , but by effective causes , such as eye, hair and body color.

Here Aristotle interprets his individual observations in the animal world on the basis of his philosophy of science and his general philosophy of nature, as presented in the Analytica posteriora .

effect

After the death of Aristotle, his students almost entirely neglected the research program that he had set out and started in his zoological writings, with the exception of Theophrastus , who wrote several largely unsustainable treatises on animals. In all of antiquity no one commented on De generatione animalium and the other zoological works. The historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertios does not name De generatione animalium among the works of Aristotle, so he did not know it. Galen was familiar with the zoological writings of Aristotle and used them by quoting certain statements partly in agreement and partly in disagreement. But even he did not do any further zoological research in the sense of the program conceived by Aristotle.

Since the 9th century, De generatione animalium had been available in an Arabic translation, often ascribed to al-Jahiz . This translation of De generatione animalium was part of the Kitāb al-hayawān ( Book of Animals ), which is divided into nineteen books ( maqālāt ) , in which the translator compiled three zoological writings of Aristotle: Historia animalium (books 1–10), De partibus animalium ( Book 11-14) and De generatione animalium (Book 15-19). The three components were not identified as separate units by their own headings. The famous Arab scholars Avicenna , ibn Bāǧǧa and Averroes commented on De generatione animalium in whole or in part.

Michael Scotus translated the Book of Animals from Arabic into Latin by 1220 at the latest , and so it became known to the Latin-speaking world under the title De animalibus libri XIX ( Nineteen Books on Animals ). Around 1260 Wilhelm von Moerbeke made a second Latin translation, based on the Greek text. From the 14th century onwards, the younger translation slowly supplanted the older one.

De animalibus was a basic textbook for scholastic zoology and philosophical anthropology of the late Middle Ages. Albertus Magnus wrote an extensive work De animalibus ( About the animals ) in 26 books; in Book 15–19 he dealt with reproduction based on Aristotle.

After 1450, the humanist Theodoros Gazes created a new Latin translation that met the requirements of the time, which was first printed in 1476 and published in 1504 by Aldus Manutius in Venice. This Latin standard text subsequently formed the basis for the scientific study of the work. Among the early modern scientists who dealt with the embryology of Aristotle, the most prominent were Girolamo Fabrizio (1537-1619) and William Harvey (1578-1657).

output

  • Aristotle: Generation of Animals , ed. Arthur Leslie Peck, London 1963 (Greek text and English translation)

Translations (medieval)

  • Jan Brugman and Hendrik J. Drossaart Lulofs (eds.): Aristotle. Generation of Animals. The Arabic Translation commonly ascribed to Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq , Brill, Leiden 1971
  • Aafke MI van Oppenraaij (Ed.): Aristotle, De animalibus. Michael Scot's Arabic-Latin Translation , Part 3: Books XV – XIX: Generation of Animals , Brill, Leiden 1992

Translations (modern)

  • Aristotle: On the Creation of Creatures , translated by Paul Gohlke, Paderborn 1959 (Aristoteles: Die Lehrschriften Vol. 8,3)

literature

  • Maria Liatsi: Aristoteles, De Generatione Animalium, Book V. Introduction and Commentary , Trier 2000, ISBN 3-88476-428-4
  • Jochen Althoff : Warm, cold, liquid and solid in Aristoteles , Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-515-05826-5 (pp. 175–256 about De generatione animalium )
  • Dae-Ho Cho, Ousia and Eidos in the Metaphysics and Biology of Aristotle , Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-515-07945-9 (pp. 239-303 about De generatione animalium )
  • Johannes Morsink: Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals. A Philosophical Study . Lanham 1982, ISBN 0-8191-2606-3 .
  • Carlos Steel et al. (Ed.): Aristotle's Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance . Leuven 1999, ISBN 90-6186-973-0 .

Web links

Aristotle: Generation of animals (scan of the Greek-English edition by Peck, 1943)

Remarks

  1. ↑ James G. Lennox: Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology , Cambridge 2001, pp. 110-127.
  2. ↑ Hendrik J. Drossaart Lulofs, Preface , in: Aafke MI van Oppenraaij (Ed.): Aristotle, De animalibus. Michael Scot's Arabic-Latin Translation , Part 3: Books XV – XIX: Generation of Animals , Leiden 1992, p. VII.
  3. ↑ See also Remke Kruk: La zoologie aristotélicienne. Tradition arabe , in: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques , Supplément , Paris 2003, p. 331.
  4. ↑ Drossaart Lulofs, p. XIf.
  5. ↑ Theodor W. Köhler : Foundations of the philosophical-anthropological discourse in the thirteenth century , Leiden 2000, pp. 162–164, 237f., 247, 250, 273f., 314f., 321f., 334f.