The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos

Download or read book The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos written by Emanuela Bianchi and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Feminine Symptom takes as its starting point the problem of female offspring for Aristotle: If form is transmitted by the male and the female provides only matter, how is a female child produced? Aristotle answers that there must be some fault or misstep in the process. This inexplicable but necessary coincidence--sumptoma in Greek--defines the feminine symptom. Departing from the standard associations of male-activity-form and female-passivity-matter, Bianchi traces the operation of chance and spontaneity throughout Aristotle's biology, physics, cosmology, and metaphysics and argues that.