Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge
Please join us on Thursday 17 January 2013, at 4.30pm, in Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.
Generatio: medieval debates about procreation, heredity and 'bioethics'
Maaike van der Lugt (Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 / Institut Universitaire de France)
In medieval debates, the idea that the mixture of substances provided by parents determines the appearance and sex of the child coexisted, without contradiction, with the conviction that environmental and behavioural factors also play an important part. Even though the scholastics invented the concept of hereditary disease, distinctions now common between heredity and development, between the acquired and the inherited, had only limited relevance. Generatio, not heredity, was the central concept. Generatio wasn't just the stuff of scholastic speculation. As is the case today, debates about the mechanism of conception, the nature of the substances involved, and the development of the seed into a viable human being had larger moral, legal and practical significance. Several of these issues will be addressed in the
lecture: whether abortion must be equated with murder, the treatment reserved for 'monstrous' births, and the extent to which there was room, within the medieval concept of generatio, for eugenics.
There will be tea before the lecture, at 4pm in Seminar Room 1, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 6pm in Seminar Room 1
Public lecture - all welcome.
Supported by the Wellcome Trust
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/medicine/wellcomelecture2013.html
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