Averroes’ <i>Treatise on Speeds and Sperm</i>: An Epitome of the 12-Century Arabic Peripatetic Embryology
This paper contains a commented translation of the embryological Treatise on Speeds and Sperm (Maqāla fī l-buḏūr wa-l-zurūʿ) by the great 12-century Andalusian peripatetic Ibn Rushd (Averroes), which still remains, in general, on the periphery of research attention. The special subject of Averroes’ research in this text is the substance and mode of being of the ‘force’ (quwwa ), acting in the seed. Averroes’ discussion of this aporia is based on a two-level hermeneutics of the Aristotelian texts: the Andalusian examines both the arguments explicitly stated by the Stagirite and those that, inhis opinion, are ‘potentially’ contained in them. Despite the very small volume of the treatise, it touches on a wide range of embryological problems, namely: the question of the first efficient cause of the formation of the embryo, the epigenesis / preformism dilemma, the question of the existence of a faculty of soul that comes from outside and does not need bodily organs for its action. Despite the almost purely peripatetic character of the commentary, it contains both ‘Galenisms’ (quwwa muṣawwira) and some ‘hapaxes’ of the Aristotelian vocabulary. One of the most interesting features of the textis the intersection of embryological problems and noetic ones, namely, the question of whether among the faculties of the soul there is one that comes from outside and does not need bodily organs for its functioning, and if so, how this faculty exists in the body.