Anatomy and Aporia in Galen’s On the Construction of Fetuses

Galen was well known for his insistence on scientific precision in the practice of medicine, and his own claims to authority often rested on his assertions that other medical writers (contemporary and historical) did not properly understand logical inference or empirical demonstration. One area of inquiry, however, that remained impenetrable even by scientific methods was the nature of the soul, particularly questions about its materiality, ontology, intentionality and teleology. Galen famously concedes his aporia about the soul at various points in his writings, and affirms the intractability of the problem in his late work. This frustration was particularly evident in his treatise On the Formation of the Embryo, where a focus on the origins and development of a new human being revives the large questions about how bodies are formed and animated by a soul from the moment of conception. This presentation will examine how Galen approaches these questions with the specific concerns of embryology in mind. It will discuss in particular the tension in this work between Galen’s desire for accuracy and analytical completeness, and the limits of scientific expertise that a subject such as this entails. Aspects of Galen’s scientific methodology will be considered as they relate to Galen’s struggle in On the Formation of the Embryo to account for the most fundamental questions of corporeal existence and development.