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Gelber focuses on passages in GA where Aristotle treats heat and cold as agents which are said to be making (poiei), fabricating (dêmiourgei), solidifying (pêgnutai), putting together (sunistatai), or working (ergazetai) to accomplish something, and thereby playing a role in the formation of a living organism. Gelber s aim is to explain how heat and cold do this, and the significance, for Aristotle, of calling heat and cold the tools of soul in his explanation of animal reproduction.
Aristotle's theory is not that the male provides the form and the female the matter of the generated animal, but that the male, in an act analogous to what one can call fertilization, begins the process by which the female grows within herself and bears their mutual offspring. It is this process, the process of the generation of animals, in relation to which Aristotle speaks of the male as the formal and the female as the material principle, and in relation to which he identifies the male as active and the female as passive. The author suggested that if Aristotle's theory of animal generation depicts the father as providing the form of an animal and the mother its matter, it is a theory inconsonant with his larger metaphysical views. With very few exceptions, Aristotle does not characteristically describe the male as providing the form of the animal.
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