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Precursor to Modern Biology: Where Do Babies Come From?
The Generation of Animals has not gotten the recognition it deserves as a precursor to modern biological answers to the age-old question: Where do babies come from? During the last few hundred years fascinations with theories about "generation" from preformationism to spontaneous generation have come and gone, but what emerged in the form of modern genetics and developmental biology was anticipated, in essence, by Aristotle in this book, backed up by direct observation of developing organisms and logical arguments supporting his propositions and demonstrating the inadequacies of competing ideas. Aristotle clearly advocated for "epigenesis" where the organism is constructed step by step from nutrients and a force carrying the form of the organism- he uses the analogy of a carpenter building a house. He argues convincingly against alternative theories, including the idea of "pangenesis" that Darwin adopted by default as an explanation for heredity, which was an essential part of his theory of natural selction. It wouldn't be a bad idea to use this text as a reading in any modern course on developmental biology,embryology or genetics, and it should be an essential reading for courses on the philosophy of biological science, if only to provide some breadth and depth for modern students of biology so they have some appreciation of the intellectual history of modern science. The scientific validity of an important idea does not guarantee it's acceptance because it has to also resonate with social values and with other intersecting scientific ideas in order to be accepted. Valid ideas, however, will be re-discovered in new forms. One of the most profound lessons from reading Aristotle's generation of animals is that he states the questions and issues related to the generation of organisms very clearly, and although we havesucceeded in answering many of them we haven't really answered all of them, particularly with respect to an essential understanding, in scientific terms, of the difference between living organisms and everything else. My impression is that the biological aspects of this question have been addressed very successfully by modern science (e.g. evolution, genetics, development), but our understanding of the physics (e.g. the exact nature of the "work" done by the energy driving the autonomous generation of living systems) is not much deeper, in essence, than Aristotle's own theories about forces and causes. I am a biologist trained in genetics, and that is the reason for my interest in this text: the fact that Aristotle addressed such fundamental biological questions so clearly and directly from first principles and simple observations, and that it took nearly 2,500 years for science to catch up to him and answer some of them in ways that are consistent with his original ideas. This view is substantiated by the physicist-turned biologist Max Delbruck who mentions Aristotle in the first paragraph of his 1969 Nobel Prize Lecture.
