Generation in Renaissance Sciences

Abstract

Following ancient authors, generation is seen in the Renaissance as one of the central, characteristic features of living beings. Likewise, during the Renaissance, Aristotelian premises and principles continued to be influential in explaining generation processes. In this respect, many authors made their arguments based on spiritual forces and formative virtues. Such efforts became increasingly concerned with connecting the immaterial forces with the material basis of living things and the simple movements of particles that can be described physically. In the wake of these developments, numerous attempts were made at relating Aristotelianism to mechanistic philosophy as in the understanding of Aristotelian substantial forms as causal principles that can be reconstructed mechanically or in the presumption that there are a number of substantial forms that exist below the level of our perception of things that can be seen with the naked eye. The “technomorphous” model would continue to establish itself as the basis for such explanations. According to the model, life processes can be described based on patterns of technical processes. The displacement of the form-giving forces into the material itself leads to, among other things, depicting an embryo as having much greater autonomy when it comes to creating new lifeforms even to the extent of completely excluding the soul. The milestones set by Renaissance scholars were not merely due to their role in developing the first approaches to alternative, theoretical frameworks for thinking about generation processes (preformation vs. epigenesis), but they were moreover responsible for establishing experimental methods for the emerging field of embryology.