The Matter of Semen and the Inheritance of Individual Traits in Aristotle’s De generatione animalium

Abstract

Although, according to Aristotle’s theory of reproduction, in the process of generation a male always transmits form and a female provides matter, in the blooded animals males perform their function with the use of a material tool known as semen or a seminal fluid. Aristotle describes it as a kind of foam consisting of water, earth and pneuma; the last one, being a vehicle of vital heat, causes semen to be fertile. As a seminal fluid is produced from blood – the final stage of useful nourishment, intended to turn into each of body parts of the particular animal whose heart produces it – it is endowed with the same movement or, rather, the same set of movements as that in virtue of which the animal’s body grows. In the process of reproduction these movements not only transmit to the offspring the principle of movement and specific form, but they also attempt to recreate in the offspring’s body individual features of the particular father. For this reason, males which do not emit semen fail to generate offspring that look like themselves.

In this paper I also try to demonstrate that the transmission of individual hereditary characteristics depends not only on pneuma enclosed in the semen, but also on „an earthy element” which forms the envelope, because by preserving and increasing the vital heat it improves the efficiency of the movements.