The Lagoon

by Armand Marie Leroi

  Pneuma. It’s hard to know what, exactly, A. thinks pneuma is since the whole theory seems to be rather poorly worked out. The problem is that A. first says pneuma is just ‘hot air’, GA 736a1, and then, just a few dozen lines later, says it’s something more ‘divine’ than the basic terrestrial elements, indeed it appears to be analogous to the element of which stars are made, aithēr, GA 736b33, cf. DC I, 3. Between these mundane and exotic options scholars have found much to dispute, see PECK (1943) Appendix B, BALME and GOTTHELF (1992) pp. 158–65, FREUDENTHAL (1995) ch. 3 and KING (2001) ch. 4. For the role of pneuma in animal locomotion see MA 10. FRAMPTON (1991) and GREGORIC and CORCILIUS (2013) give slightly different accounts of the distribution of pneuma in the body and hence the extent of the connectivity problem; see also NUSSBAUM (1978) Essay 3. The communication between the heart and locomotor appendages, and the metaphor of the automatic puppets is given at MA 701b2 [trans. Nussbaum, 1978], but I have omitted references to ‘little carts’, another mechanical simile. PREUS (1975) p. 291 and LOECK (1991) discuss what A. might have meant by these devices. For the Greeks and muscles see OSBORNE (2011) pp. 39–40. Mechanical amplification in the rudder and city analogies can be found at MA 701b27 and MA 702a21. The whole CIOM model is put together with a diagram at MA 703b27 [trans. Nussbaum, 1978]. A. discusses the mental faculties of human beings in DA III, 3–4; I do not consider them further.

  LX

  The cybernetic soul. A.’s account of thermoregulation is mostly given in the book traditionally known as de Respiratione; following KING (2001) pp. 38–40 I include it in JSVM. A. discusses the need for cooling at JSVM 5 and the heart–lung cycle at JSVM 480a16; see KING (2001) pp. 127–9. He explains respiration in insects at JSVM 471b20, JSVM 474b25 and JSVM 475a29 and fishes at JSVM 480b19. The cybernetic interpretation of A.’s theory of the soul is originally due to NUSSBAUM (1978) pp. 70–4 and adopted to varying degrees by FREDE (1992), WHITING (1992), KING (2001), SHIELDS (2008), QUARANTOTTO (2010), MILLER and MILLER (2010), among others. For the history of homeostasis, cybernetics and systems biology see BERNARD (1878), CANNON (1932), ROSENBLUETH et al. (1943), WIENER (1948) – who, on p. 19, gives the etymology of governor/kybernētēs/cybernetics – ADOLPH (1961) and COOPER (2008). For a history of feedback control devices see MAYR (1971) and, more generally on Greek technology, BERRYMAN (2009). The relationship between teleology and goal-seeking behaviour is discussed by AYALA (1968) and RUSE (1989). ‘Many of the characteristics of organismic systems . . .’ is from BERTALANFFY (1968) p. 141. For the general properties of systems see SIMON (1996). ‘Components come and go . . .’ is from PALSSON (2006) p. 13. A. uses the steersman metaphor in another context at DA 413a8 and DA 416b26. He speaks of methodological reductionism at Pol 1252a17. Souls hold living things together at DA 410b10, DA 411b6 and DA 415a6; see QUARANTOTTO (2010) for further references and discussion.

  LXI

  The end of development. A. attacks Empedocles on the vertebral column at PA 639a20. He describes a spontaneously aborted human foetus at HA 583b14; at least some of the information in surrounding passages is Hippocratic; this may be too.

  LXII

  Mating behaviour. Most of A.’s information on mating in blooded animals is in HA VI, 18–37. Animals are excited by desire at HA 571b9. A. describes mating calls at HA 536a11, pigeon courtship at HA 560b25, the wantonness of mares and cats at HA 572a9 and HA 540a9 respectively, and the reluctance of hinds at HA 540a4, cf. HA 578b5. He describes male–male conflict at HA 571b11. Males are initially defined at GA 716a14. A.’s initial definition of the sexes is anatomical and functional; later, at GA 765b13, he amplifies it with a physiological one; see MAYHEW (2004) and NIELSEN (2008). For the copulatory techniques of blooded animals see HA V, 2–6, GA I, 4; for how hedgehogs mate see GA 717b26, and for how fishes do it, GA 756a32.

  Reproductive fluids. A. describes the origin of sperma at PA 651b15 and GA 725a21. Although I usually translate sperma as ‘seed’ – which could be either male or female reproductive residues – it’s clear that sometimes A. uses it in the more restricted sense of ‘semen’, i.e. male residue, and I translate accordingly. A. discusses the formation of the menses at GA 738a10ff. and elsewhere; describes vaginal discharges at HA VI, 18–19, HA 582a34 and GA 738a5; see PREUS (1975), pp. 54–7, n. pp. 286–7. He conflates the menstrual and oestral discharges at GA 728b12. He discusses exceptions to his menstrual fluid model at GA 727b12 and GA 739a26. A. claims that wind eggs and fish roe are the avian and piscine equivalent of menses at GA 750b3. For a modern view on the distribution and function of menstruation see STRASSMANN (1996).

  LXIII

  Anatomy of generative organs. A. describes the external genitals of blooded animals at HA 500a33, HA III, 1, HA V, 5, HA 566a2 and GA I, 3–8. He describes the cloaca of the ovipara at GA 719b29. For anatid penises see BRENNAN et al. (2007); for penis construction in general see KELLEY (2002). A. explains the function of the testes at GA I, 4–7 and GA 787b20. He explains the absence of testes and penises in fish and snakes and other differences in male reproductive anatomy at GA I, 4–7. Here A. also tackles the question of why, if the business of animals is to reproduce, they would want to limit their sperm production at all. For a modern explanation of the looping vas deferens see WILLIAMS (1996) pp. 141–3. The anatomy of male generative organs in blooded animals is described at HA 510a13 and of females at HA 510b7 and GA I, 3, 8–17. Here A. also explains why the uterus is so variously arranged in different kinds.

  LXIV

  Female sexual desire. A. discusses sexual desire in girls and women at HA 581b12 and GA 773b25, the role of female pleasure during sex, its relationship to conception, the production of menstrual fluids and the production of vaginal lubrication at HA 583a11, GA 727b7, GA 728a31 and GA 739a29. He names the glans at HA 493a25. HA X is usually excluded from HA because it’s devoted to causal explanation; it is even sometimes thought not to be Aristotelian at all; see BALME (1991), Introduction, p. 26 and NIELSEN (2008). The accounts of the mechanics of reproduction in HA X and GA are similar, but differ in two ways. In HA X A. argues that intercourse brings down female seed (= menstrual fluid) to a region in front of the uterus where it mingles with the male seed, but at GA 739b16 he denies it. Second, in HA X, A. argues that the female orgasm is needed to suck the mixture of seeds back up into the uterus, but in GA this is apparently not necessary. For a comparison of the two accounts see BALME (1991), n. pp. 487–9. For modern views on the function of the female orgasm, if any, see JUDSON (2005) contra LLOYD (2006). Montaigne’s spurious quote is from his Essays III, 5. 783.

  LXV

  Fertilization. For GA’s subject as the moving cause of life see GA 715a12. A.’s set of sexual dichotomies between the male and female contribution to reproduction are known as his theory of ‘reproductive hylomorphism’, HENRY (2006b). Here are some typical passages in which he claims that males supply form and females matter: GA 729a9, GA 730a27, GA 732a1, GA 737a29, GA 738b9 and GA 740b20. The theory apparently conflicts with many different aspects of his mechanistic accounts, and I consider some of these conflicts in more detail below. See HENRY (2006b) for an entrée to the literature on how, or indeed if, these conflicts can be resolved.

  Wind eggs. A. repeatedly returns to the subject of wind eggs. For wind eggs in birds in general see HA 539a31, HA 560a5, GA 730a32, GA 737a30, GA 741a16 and GA III, 1; for wind eggs in partridges see HA 560b10, GA 751a14 and once more at HA 541a27, which, however, appears to be an interpolation. I thank Chris McDaniel of Mississippi State University, and Tommaso Pizzari of the University of Oxford and Nick Willcox of Pheasants UK, for telling me about wind eggs. A. discusses possibly parthenogenetic fish at HA 538a18, HA 539a27, HA 567a26, GA 741a32, GA 757b22 and GA 760a8; see CAVOLINI (1787) and SMITH (1965) for hermaphroditism in the Serranidae. Interestingly, A. not only misses the dual gonads of these fishes, he also claims that functional hermaphrodites can’t exist, GA 727a25.

  The transmission of soul. A. speaks of the menses’ potential for soul
at GA 736a31, and how the semen is the animal potentially at GA 726b15 [trans. PECK (1943)]. The term translated here as ‘potential’ is, once again, dynamis; A. discusses the potential/actual distinction extensively at GA II, 1; see PECK (1943) pp. xiix–lv. A. applies the carpenter analogy to the action of semen at GA 730b6. He gives zoological arguments against the physical transmission of seminal matter at GA 729a34 and GA 736a24; cf. GA 721a13. Besides these passages he describes grasshopper copulation at HA 555b18; see DAVIES and KATHIRITHAMY (1986) p. 81.

  Pneuma in reproduction. Pneuma as found in semen, GA 736b33; its action in fertilization, GA 737a7, GA 741b5. A. alludes to the homonymy of Aphros/Aphrodite at GA 736a19. Semen as foam is an early idea and appears in the Hippocratic corpus, Littré VII, On Generation, 1; see LONIE (1981), and in a fragment of Diogenes of Apollonia, DK 64B6. See COLES (1995) for a discussion of fifth-century models of reproduction.

  LXVI

  Descriptive embryology. On Hippocratic embryology see Littré VII, On Generation, 29; LONIE (1981) and NEEDHAM (1934) p. 17. A. describes the embryogenesis of the chicken at HA 561a7, cf. GA II, 4–6 and GA III, 1–2; THOMPSON (1910) n. HA 561a7 explains what A. is seeing and PECK (1943) p. 396 illustrates the various membranes. A. describes teleost embryology at HA 564b24 – see OPPENHEIMER (1936) – and mammalian embryology at GA 745b23 and GA 771b15. He thinks that mice and bats and hares also have cotyledonary ‘uteruses’, HA 511a28, but their placentas are now classified as discoidal. He discusses insect ontogeny at HA 550b22, GA 732a25 and GA 758a30; see DAVIES and KATHIRITHAMY (1986) p. 102; and compares viviparous and oviparous embryos at GA 753b31. He describes the relative perfection of embryos at GA 732a25, cf. HA 489b7, and in GA II, 1 A. argues that within the blooded creatures at least, the perfection of the offspring is associated with how much heat and moisture the parent has (cold/dry being least perfect and hot/moist being most perfect). This will become part of an arrangement of the animals into grades, a kind of scala naturae, that is orthogonal to his classification system, see Chs LXXXVII and XCVII. A.’s anticipation of von Baer’s first law, BAER (1828), can be found at GA 736b2; see NEEDHAM (1934) p. 31 and PECK (1943) n. p. 166. For the embryological hourglass see KALINKA et al. (2010).

  LXVII

  Developmental mechanics. A. compares the effect of semen on the menses to the action of rennet and fig juice on milk at GA 737a11 and GA 739b21 [trans. PLATT (1910)]; cf. HA 516a4, GA 729a11, GA 771b23 and GA 772a22. A. also compares embryonic growth to the growth of yeast at GA 775a17; see PREUS (1975) pp. 56 and 77. NEEDHAM (1934) p. 34 draws attention to the fact that he is talking about enzymes and traces the fate of the cheese-making metaphor in, for example, the Book of Job. A. says that the heart develops first at HA 561b10, PA III, 4, JSVM 468b28, GA 734a11, GA 735a23, GA 738b15, GA 740b2, GA 741b15 and GA 742a16. He speaks of the yolk as the supply of nutrient in GA III, 2 and of the blood vessels as roots at GA 739b33. The pottery metaphor is from GA 743a10 and the furrow is from GA 746a18.

  Epigenesis v. preformationism. A. argues against the Pre-Socratic preformationists at GA I, 17. PREUS (1975) p. 285 suggests that certain passages in Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ tragedies as well as Plato’s Symposium are preformationist in the broad sense, but their embryology is sufficiently sketchy that you can read any theory you want into them. A more convincing case can be made for Anaxagoras DK 59B10 [trans. BARNES (1982)] and Empedocles; see BARNES (1982) pp. 332, 436–42. His own, epigenetic account is given in two metaphor-rich passages in which he compares the embryo to a painter, GA 743b20, and then to a net, GA 734a11. He asserts the homogeneity of semen at GA 724b21. The origin of each organ or uniform part in raw maternal material is given at GA 734a25. His automaton-causality is given at GA 734b9, cf. GA 741b8; see Ch. CIX for the role of these puppets in locomotion. Automaton-causality in embryogenesis appears to conflict with A.’s reproductive hylomorphism insofar as it gives a substantial formative role to the mother. PECK (1943) p. xiii simply accepts that maternal matter is ‘informed to a high degree’, but BALME (1987c) pp. 281–2, cf. BALME (1987d) p. 292, resolves the conflict by arguing that the automaton refers to movements in the semen and not the embryo. The kordylos is described at HA 589b22; cf. HA 490a4, JSVM 476a5 and PA 695b24. Thompson (1910) and PECK (1965) suggest this animal is a larval newt; OGLE (1882) p. 248 that it is a tadpole. He says that ‘it is strange and yet, as it appears to me, indisputably true, that A. was perfectly ignorant of the fact that tadpoles are the larval forms of frogs and newts’. See also KULLMANN (2007) pp. 741–2 on the mysterious kordylos.

  LXVIII

  Embryology after A. The classic history of embryology is NEEDHAM (1934) who assesses the Renaissance ‘macroiconographers’ as well as Harvey’s Aristotelianism, p. 118, on which see LENNOX (2006) too. Traditionally all theories that postulate that the embryo or its parts exist in the unfertilized material of its parents, be it the sperm or eggs, have been labelled ‘preformationist’, NEEDHAM (1934), and this is the sense in which I use the term; but see BOWLER (1971) and PYLE (2006) for more subtle distinctions among the various theoretical strands. NEEDHAM (1934) pp. 29–30 suggested that A.’s account of automaton-causality is an anomaly in what is otherwise a more or less vitalistic account of embryogenesis, but it is, in fact, at the heart of his account of embryogenesis – as the kordylos and sex determination show (Ch. LXXIII); also PECK (1943) p. 577. See PINTO-CORREIA (1997) and COBB (2006) for the elucidation of the role of semen and MAYR (1982) ch. 15 for the work of the mostly German microscopists of the nineteenth century.

  LXIX

  Variation under domestication. A. writes about sheep husbandry at HA 573b18, HA 596a13 and elsewhere; see THOMPSON (1932) on leader rams. He describes morphological variation in sheep at HA 496b25, HA 522b23, HA 596b4, in particular the Syrian sheep and the humped cattle at HA 606a13. Darwin’s passage on the same subject is compounded from DARWIN (1837–8/2002–) 233e and DARWIN (1838–9/2002–) 12e.

  LXX

  Intra-specific/informal variation. For Darwin on pigeons see DARWIN (1859) ch. 1; for justification of the term ‘informal variation’ see n. Chs XXXIII and LXXIII. On hoofed pigs in A., HA 499b12, GA 774b15; in DARWIN (1868) vol. 1, p. 75 who cites A. For A. on domesticated v. wild animals see HA 488a30 and PA 643b5. A. mentions Ethiopians often, e.g. HA 517a18, HA 586a4, GA 722a10, GA 736a10, GA 782b35 and Metaph X, 9, but never says they’re a distinct genos. In the Politics, e.g. Pol VII, 7, A. occasionally speaks of different genē of men, distinguishing Greeks from various non-Greeks. This seems to be a casual use of genos since elsewhere he is clear that the difference among men is due to a difference in environment not form. He will, occasionally, use genos in this more casual way, e.g. the genē of bees which are clearly reproductively linked and the sea urchin of the deep which differs from other sea urchins in its material aspects only. On Greeks v. barbarians: e.g. Pol 1252b5; see HANNAFORD (1996) pp. 43–57; SIMPSON (1998) p. 19 and this text Ch. XCIX. The only domesticated breeds that A. distinguishes as ‘kinds’ are dog breeds, HA 574a16 and HA 608a27, which he seems to think are as different from each other as are wolves and foxes (cf. Theophrastus CP IV, 11.3); he accordingly treats crosses between them as hybrids: HA 607a1, HA 608a31, GA 738b27 and GA 746a29. A. makes his interest in informal (intra-specific) variation explicit at LBV 465a1, where he uses eidos in the sense of ‘species’. For more about essentialism see Chs XXXVI–XXXVIII. For A.’s environmental determinism see HA 605b22, and specifically with respect to large reptiles in Egypt, LBV 466b21; small mammals in Egypt, HA 606a22; bees and wasps, GA 786a35; hair, GA 782a19; sheep fleece colour, HA 518b15. In GA V most of the variety that he considers cannot be teleologically or formally explained, but is the consequence of material necessity; see Gotthelf and Leunissen in GOTTHELF (2012) ch. 5. For Plato on selective breeding in animals and humans see Rep 459A, Rep 546A and POPPER (1945/1962) vol. I, pp. 51–4, 81–4 n. pp. 227–8, 242–6; for A. on the regulation of marriage see Pol VII, 16.

  LXXI

  Theoph
rastus on nature v. nurture. T. discusses early- v. late-sprouting wheat and other plants at CP I, 10.1–2 and CP IV, 11.1–7; the differences in environmental sensitivities between plants and animals at CP IV, 11.9; the effects of environmental factors on plant growth at CP II, 1–6, CP II, 13.1–5 and HP II, 2.7–12; and the waters at Pyrrha at CP II, 6.4. T. on nature v. nurture see CP IV, 11.7 [trans. EINARSON and LINK (1976–90)]. There is a fascinating cross-reference between T. and A. where each compares the influence of the soil on a plant to an animal mother’s influence on her offspring – T.: CP I, 9.3 and CP II, 13.3, and A.: GA 738b28; see n. this text Ch. XCIV.