Chapter 23: Generation of Animals *

CHAPTER 23: GENERATION OF ANIMALS * Devin Henry The place of GA in Aristotle’s philosophy The best way to understand the place of Generation of Animals in Aristotle’s philosophy is to consider the way Aristotle himself envisions the proper organisation of the study of living things. According to Parts of Animals I.1, biology starts by collecting the phenomena concerning each kind and then goes on to study its causes. The three main biological works—HA, PA, GA—seem to be organised in accordance with this. HA studies the differentiae of animals, while PA and GA provide their causal explanations. In this way PA and GA follow on the results of HA (though see Balme 1987; cf. Lennox 1996). The relative order of PA and GA can also be understood in terms of the methodological recommendations of PA I.1. At 640a10-19 Aristotle tells us that the causal story must begin with the animal as it exist in actuality (the mature organism) and then go on to consider how it comes into being. In this way causal explanations proceed from the causes of being an animal (PA) to the causes of becoming one (GA); for comingto-be is for the sake of being rather than vice versa (PA I.1, 640a10-32; GA V.1, 778b2-11; cf. Lennox 2001a, xi). The four causes of animal generation can be summarised as follows. The mother and father represent the material and efficient causes, respectively. The mother provides the matter out of which the embryo is formed, while the father provides the agency that informs that material and triggers its development. The formal cause is the definition of the animal’s substantial being (GA I.1, 715a4: ho logos tês ousias). The final cause is the adult form, which is the end for the sake of which development takes place. I shall return to this four-fold account at the end of the chapter once we have a better understanding of Aristotle’s project in GA. Male and Female as archai Aristotle’s investigation into animal generation begins from the observation that offspring come into being from the union of animals of the same kind and that male and female are the “starting-points” (archai) of this change: Of the generation of animals, we must discuss various questions case by case in the order that they arise, and we must connect our discussion to what has been said. For, as we said above, the male and female may be put down first and foremost as starting-points of generation, the male as possessing the efficient cause of generation, the female as possessing the material cause. The most convincing proof of this [sc. that male and female are starting-points of