Harvey cast male semen as the source of reason and form in generation

Evidence

The male also supplied “reason” and excellence to the egg, “as if the hen received the art and reason, the form and laws of the future embryo from his address… . Nor should we so much wonder what it is in the cock that preserves and governs so perfect and beautiful an animal, and is the first cause of that entity which we call the soul; but much more what it is in the egg, … of so great virtue as to produce such an animal and raise him to the very summit of excellence.” Harvey recognized, as had Aristotle, that the offspring was not the conscious result of the male mind; hence they both held the position that it was nature working through the parents that produced the young. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 633

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Harvey’s egg theory sustained male superiority even where he broke with Aristotle — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 650