Aristotle Against the Hippocratics on Sexual Generation: A Reply to Coles

Abstract

An examination of the similarities and differences between Aristotle and the Hippocratic physicians is illuminating on a variety of points, as the work of G. E. R. Lloyd and other scholars has shown. Here, I consider and criticize A. Coles's recent contention («Biomedical models of reproduction in the fifth century B.C. and Aristotle's Generations of animals», in «Phronesis», 40, 1995, pp. 48-88) that, regarding the question of how sexual generation takes place, Aristotle was influenced so significantly by Cnidian medical ideas that Aristotle's and the Hippocratic theory are virtually the same. My position, on the contrary, is that Aristotle's insistence on the inclusion of form and telos in a causal account of generation makes the difference between their theories paramount. Recognizing this difference in its biological and philosophical significance is crucial for a proper assessment of their separate, and indeed unique, contributions. Against coles's idea that Aristotle, like the Hippocratic writer, has a pansomatic theory of generation I argue that: 1) the thesis is prima facie implausible given Aristotle's sustained critical discussion of pansomatism in GA I, 17; 2) the thesis cannot be sustained with the textual evidence Coles adduces; and 3) that the error in the thesis can be traced to Coles's attributing to Aristotle a reproductive physiology. This attribution is anachronistic in that Aristotle identifies no such a science. More importantly, however, it presumes in advance what needs to be demonstrated, namely that the material and mechanical parts of Aristotle's account of generation can be isolated and examined strictly on their own terms. But as I maintain, Aristotle's theory of generation cannot be separated from his commitment to form and final cause. At stake in this debate is the reducibility or the nonreducibility of the metaphysical dimension of Aristotle's theory