The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

It’s no surprise, then, that Aristotle’s data on inherited variation are poor. Even so, it’s surprising just how poor they are. True, he mentions a few cases of inherited variation, but they’re just confused hearsay and he misses much of what he could have seen. No Darwin, he ignores domesticated animals. Of course, he doesn’t cross anything (though there are some intriguing passages on hybrids). He devotes pages to variation in human eye and hair colour, but gives no indication that they can be inherited. He’s fascinated by teratology – dwarfism, hermaphroditism, conjoined twinning, anomalous genitals, extra appendages – and says that such deformities are often inherited, but sometimes not,