Classical Writers After Aristotle
Vitruvius, a Roman architect and writer of the 1st century BCE, advised that libraries be placed facing eastwards to benefit from morning light, but not towards the south or the west as those winds generate bookworms.
Aristotle claimed that eels were lacking in sex and lacking milt, spawn and the passages for either. Rather, he asserted eels emerged from earthworms. Later philosophers dissented. Pliny the Elder did not argue against the anatomic limits of eels, but stated that eels reproduce by budding, scraping themselves against rocks, liberating particles that become eels. Athenaeus described eels as entwining and discharging a fluid which would settle on mud and generate life. On the other hand, Athenaeus also dissented towards spontaneous generation, claiming that a variety of anchovy did not generate from roe, as Aristotle stated, but rather, from sea foam.
Read more about this topic: Spontaneous Generation
Famous quotes containing the words classical, writers and/or aristotle:
“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron buildinglike Tower Bridgeor a classical front put on a steel framelike the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a livingnot something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (18821940)
“Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second bests a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“You have both said well,
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have glozed, but superficiallynot much
Unlike young men whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)