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Aristotle On The Mechanisms Of Inheritance, Devin Henry
Aristotle On The Mechanisms Of Inheritance, Devin Henry
Devin Henry
In this paper I address an important question in Aristotle’s biology, What are the causal mechanisms behind the transmission of biological form? Aristotle’s answer to this question, I argue, is found in Generation of Animals Book 4 in connection with his investigation into the phenomenon of inheritance. There we are told that an organism’s reproductive material contains a set of ‘‘movements’’ which are derived from the various ‘‘potentials’’ of its nature (the internal principle of change that initiates and controls development). These ‘‘movements,’’ I suggest, function as specialized vehicles for com- municating the parts of the parent’s heritable form during …