Delbrück, Max, Aristotle-totle-totle (art. de 1971)

7/28/2019 Delbrck, Max, Aristotle-totle-totle (art. de 1971)

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Reprinted fom "0fand. E. Borek, eds.N . Y . , I g ? I . .l"licrobes an d Life," J. MonodColumbia University Prees, .i=.t+1,.,;') - {

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THELocIcr,N:Let us takeanothercxanple, AII catsare mortal.Socratess mortal. Therelore,Socrates s a cat.THEoLDcENTLEMAN:nd has our teet. Indeed, do havea catnamedSocrates.THELOGICI|N:here,you see. . .THBoLDcENTLEMAN:henSocrates ea wasa cat!TrrELocrcr^Nt That s wha Logc rcveals to us!E. roNesco,The Rhinoceros

During tbe past 20 yearsAndr Lwoff-zon cher collgue et ani-andI have been carrying on a casualcorrespondenceabout Aristotle, in-spired by a remark in a public lectue by another dea friend and col-league,who claimedthat Aristotle, more than 3000 yearsago,had saidsuch and such a thing about Life. It stands to reason that a prenatalquote from Aristotle, centuriesbefore his birth, is somerhingspecialand precious,whatever ts content. Dr. Lwoff and I, therefore, endeav-ored to nd other, possiblystill earlier utterances hat might shed ighton the intellectual developmentof the great sage rom Stagira. And wedid not labor in vain. Indeed, in one of Dr. Lwoffs most recent ettersto me he was able to communicatea quotation dating back more than4000 years, addirig, justly, "The more you push him into the remotepast te more impressive he man becomes."Unfortunately, f am not in a position to publish here thesemeta-historical studies, since this would have required the consent of Dr.Lwoff. The rules set up by the edirors of this book explicitly forbade

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suchnapproach.r::',iJ.l"i:"'" historians",,.,."::o dig out the lruirs of ou labors from rhc appropriatearchivcs.Asfar asDr. Lwoffs letters o nreare conccrncd, can throw out thc hintthat they rvill be deposited n the Archive of the Millikan Librrry ofthe California nstituteof Technology.My lctters o Dr. Lwoff shouldbc in his fiies. must confcss harI tried to obtain copiesof these cttersby stealth. wrote to JacqucsMonod,suggestinghar Gislemightbe able o find then. Hc expressedcnthusiasm nd vowedcooperation. ut , as we al l know, Jacqucs s un-depcndabic. At lovers' perjuries, hey say,Jove aughs."He laughsatJacqucs's crjuries, oo. I neverheard ronr him again.Nevertheless,hile we are ralkingaboutAristotle, shouid ike toutilizc this opportunity to srate he conjecturehat this wonderful nrandiscovcrcdDNA. Let me explain.To considcrAristotlenot as a philosophicalystem ut as a humanbeingsubject o developmenrs an idea of this, our twentiethcenrury.'WernerJaeger (1925) was the first to pursue his approach,with avengeance,herebyushering n a new cra of Aristotelianstudies.Nowit so happencd hat Jaegerknew next to nothing about biology. Helivcd before the double helix had hit the news and could not see any-thing of interest n either the biology of his own day or in Aristotle'sfive major biotogicalbooks (I/rsloria animalium,De partibusanimalium,De motu animalium, De incessuanimalium,De generatoneanimalium).In fact he consideredhesebooks as something ompiledby Aristotlein his old age, llusrrativeappiications f his generalviews on naturalphilosophyand metaphysics. crutinyof the internalevidence y a hostof later studentshas modified this view to the extentof placingsomeof thesebooks in the period of Aristotle's travels with rheophrastoson Lesbos and in Macedonia,before his return to Athens and thefoundingof his own schooi,but denitelyafterhis formativeperiod of20 years n Plato'sAcademy.Nobody can fail to be impressedwith thewealthof biologicalobservations,nd Ingmar Dring (i965) pointsoutthe intensity, variety, and subtlety of the speculativearguments.He,too, however,puts thesestudiesafter the main philosophical pus, andespeciallyattributesDe generationeanimalium to Aristotle's late period.This chronologymay well be correct for the books we have. How-ever, I would iike to conjecture (and I would not assume hat I em


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52 M. DE,LBRcKthe f irst to do so, having assinl i l ted only 10-3 of thc rclcvant l i tcra-ture) that bio iogicat stuci icsconstituteci he dccisivc early intellectualexpcrience n Aristotlc's l i fe, inrpr int ing telos on him as his most pcr-vasivc conccpt. \-,herc Plato sccs thc world as iclcrs of which staticobjccts are the shadows, Aristorlc sees striving and devclopment to-wards goas and motions govcrncd by permanent plans.The folowing passage rom De partibus animalium (I , 5; 644bLl-645a37) contrasrs rhe eremal world of astronomy with the seeminglyephemeral one tirat surrounds us on Earth:Of the products of Nature some are eternal,not subject to generationandcorr.rption,othersgrow and perish.Of the former, grand and divine as theyare, rile have less nsight since they offer few aspects or our perception.From thesescantydata !ve an explore what we care to know about them.In contrast, for the perishable hings, plants and animals, we are given agreat wealth of information since they are closeat hand. If one makes theeffort, much can be learnedabout eachkind. Both sciences ave their charm.Even though ou understandingof the eternal things is more limited, theyfascinateus more than the things of our own world becauseof their gran-deur, just as our imagination gets moe excited by even a glimpse of abeloved person than by the close observationof many other and even impor-tant things.However, the perishable hings are to bc preferred as objectsofsciencebecause f the wealth of knowledgewe can gather about them. I willspeakabour he naureof animalsand to the bestof my ability not overlookanything, may it seem arge or small. Also with those less appealingcrea-tures, nature grants indescribablepleasures o those with a scientific bent,by rcvealingher creative power ro their scientificscrutiny. Indeed it wouldbe abs urd were we to take delight in artistic reproductions,admiring thecraft of the artist-as we do with paintingsand sculptures-and should nottake delighr in the original creations of nature, especially when we canachieve some measureof understandingof their structure. Therefore oneshould not childishly recoil from the study of lower animals. All creationsof nature are miraculous.When strangerswere visiting Heraklitos and foundhim warming himsclf by rhe oven they hesitated o enter. He encouragedthem to approach,saying, "The Gods are here, too." Just so one shouldapproach the study of any animal with reverence,n the certainty that anyof them are natural and beautiful. I say "beautiful" because n the worksof nature and precisely n them there is alwaysa plan and nothing acciden-tal. The full realizationof the plan, however, hat fo r which a thing existsand towardswhich it has developed, s its essential eauty. Also one shoutdhave it clearly in mind that one is not studying an organ or a vessel for its


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own akcur or,r",J'i';:';:'"::i oncdcars,,n, n",*t"lno t with bricks, on'i,or wood.Thus he naturai cicntist clls wih th efunctionalwhole,not with its parts,which s separate ntitieshavc nocxistcnce.This famous passageould be entitlcd"A BiotogistLooks (Somc-what Defcnsivcly)ar Physics," nd it is not the only one in whichAristotlc s anxious o point out that he worldof creaturcs as ts kind

of cternity, oo. n De generationenimaliumwe find (II, l;73Ib, 32-39) this scntcnce: Since it is impossibie hat crearures hould becternal, hcsc hings which are generated re not erernaias individuals(thoughthe essences in the individual)but as a species."Anybody who is familiar with today's physicsand biology, andwho rcads Aristotle's writings in these wo fields,must be struck bythe aptness f many of his biological oncepts,n contrast o the tanglcdinconsistcnciesf his physicaland cosmological nalyses. nd, indeed,nobody would deny that Aristotle's physics ryasa catastrophe,whilehis biology abounds n aggressivepeculative nalysisof vast observa-tions on morphology,anatomy,systematics,nd, most importanrly,oncmbryologyand development.Aristotle does consider t remarkable,and a fundamentalaspectof Nature, that human beingsbegethumanbeings,and do not begetrabbitsor an ear of corn.rWhat strikes he modern,readermost forciblyis his insistencehat in the generation f animals he male contributes,in the semen,a lorm principle, not a mini-man. He argues,contraHippocrates,hat the semen s nof a secretion,n which each part ofthe body is represented y a contribution rom that part, pointing out:(a) The resemblancef children o parentss no proof of part-for-part representarionbecause he resemblances also found in voice andin way of moving GA I, 1,8;722a,4-7).(b) Men generate rogenybefore hey havecertainparts,suchasbeards r gray hair (722a,8-9);similarly with plants 7ZZa, 12-14).(c) Inheritancemay skip generations'asin the caseof the womanin Elis who had intercounewith an Ethiopian.Her daughterwas notdark but fhe daughter's on was" (722a, 10-12).

1See (and hear) the S-mnute lecture (with guitarre) on molecular genetics byJoel Heskowitz, enritled "The Double Talking Helix Blues," a phonograph recordpublished by Tbc Vertebral Disc, 913 S. Claremont, Chicago, lllinois 60612,


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54 M. DELBRijcK(d) Sincesemencan determinecmalechikjrcn, t clearly cannotdo so by bcinga sccretion, n a nran, rom femalegenirals 723a, 3l_

J ) .Frorn thc t-oregoiagt is clear ihat thc scmcn does not corrsistof contribu_t ionsof all pans of th e body of th e male (as Hippocrates ad taught), andthat the female's contriburion is quite differcnt from the mare's.The malccontributes he plan of the developnen!and the fcmale thc substrate.Forthis rcason he femaredoes not produceoffspringby herself, since the formprincip lc s missing, .e., something o bcgin he development f the mbryo,somcthing hat will determinc the form ir has to assume(GA I, 2L; 730a,24-30).

The form principle is tikencd to a carpenter. The carpenter is amoving force which changes the substrate,but the moving force is notmatcrially contaiued in the nished product.The semencontributesnothing to the materiarbody of the embryo but onrycommunicates ts program of development. his capability s thai which actsand creates,while the material which receives his instruction and is shapedby is the undischarged residue of the mensrrual fluid (GA I, 2t; liga,5-8).The creatureproduced from them (the form principle in the semenand tbematter coming from the female) is produced rike a bed comes into beingfrom the carpenterand the wood (729b, l7-1g).The male contributes the principle of development, the female the materiar( 7 3 0 a , 2 8 ) .The male emits semen n some animarsand where he does, t does not be-come part of tbe embryo; just as no part of the carpenter enters to thewood in which he works, . but the form is imparted by him to thematerialby meansof the changeswhich he effects. . . It is his informationthat controls he motion of hi s hands (GA I,22;230b, 10_19).

Quite a few quotations in a similar vein could be added. put intomodern language, what all of these quotaiions say is this: The formprinciple is the information which is stored i the semen. After fertili-zation it is read out i a preprogrammed way; the readout alters thematter upon which it acts, but it does not aner the stored information,which is not, properly speaking, part of the finished product. In otherwords, if that committee in stockhotm, which has the unenviable taskeach year of pointing out the most creative scientists, had the liberty of


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ARISTOTLE_TOTLE_TOTLBgiving awards posrhumousiy, think they should considerAristotle orthc discoveryof the principle nplicd in DNA. It is my contention hatAristotle'sprincipleof the "unmoved mover" originated vith his bio-logicalstudies, nd that it was grafted, ron here, irst onto physics,then onto asrronomy,and finally onto his cosmologicalheology.I should ike to suggcst,urthermore,hat te reason or thc lackof apprcciation.ntong cientists,f Aristotlc's chemeies n our hrvingbccn biinded for 300 yearsby the Newtonianview of the world. Somuch so, that anybodywho held that the mover had to be in contactwith thc moveci nd alkeriabout an "unmovedmover" collidedhead-onwith Newton's dictum: Action equals eaction.Any statement n con-flict with this axiom of Newtoniandynamicscould only appear o bemuddlednonscnse, leftover rom a benighted, rescientific ast.Andyet, "unmoved mover" perfectly describesDNA: it acts, creates ormand dcvelopment, nd is not changedn the process.Indeed, let us go one step further while we are iu the mood, nestrs chers collgueset nanmoinsmes amis, and consider the fact thatthe rc-entry of Aristotle into Western thought occurred through scho-lasticChristian heology.Let us assert hat, by the irony of history, hevast historical impact of Aristotle ou western thought is the result ofan almost accidentalappropriationof the most secondaryand mis-guided aspectsof Aristotle's speculations, nd that it is due to thisbizarre twist that we are encumbered oday with a total barrier ofunderstandingetween he scientist nd thetheologian,rom St. ThomasAquinas till today, Catholic,Protestant,and LSD mystic alike. Thusa new look at Aristotle the biologistmay yet lead to a cleaerunder-stanciing f the concepts f purpose, ruth, and revelation,and perhapseven to somethingbetter than mere coexistence etweenus naturalscientistsand our colleaguesrom the other faculties.

REFERENCESDring, I. (1966). "Aristoreles.Darstellung ud rnterpretation einesDenkens,"Heidelberg,Carl Winter Universittsverlag.Jacgcr, w. (1923). "Aristoteles.Grundlegungeiner Geschicbteseiner Entwick-lung," Berlin; Nachdruck, l9SS.

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Delbrück, Max, Aristotle-totle-totle (art. de 1971)

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