There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer
34th cast. page 341, line 1231.
There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer—at present—such as the first problem submitted by
Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we
accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary （the postmenstrual period, assert others）is
responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or
nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline
to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold
and Valenti, a mixture of both?
Episode 14. The place is the lounge of the
National Maternity Hospital. Stephen, Mr. Bloom and medical students are chatting.
Episode 14 traces the stylistic history of
English prose by means of stylistic imitations. This section is based on the
style of the scientific writings of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895).
What is Pubb. Canv.?
Since this is a parody of a scientific
paper, Public Canvasser is abbreviated as if it were an academic title, just as
Medicinae Universae Doctor is abbreviated as MUDr. Mr. Bloom's occupation is freelance ad
taking. He appears to be commissioned by the newspaper to obtain vendors who
wish to advertise in the newspaper and to create ad designs.
Empedocles (ca. 490 B.C. - ca. 430 B.C.)
was a natural philosopher, physician, poet, and politician from Sicily. I am not sure if he had said something like this about sexual differentiation.
Searching around, it appears that his
theories remains quoted in Aristotle's works. Looking at Aristotle's On tbe Generation
of Animals, Empedocles' theories are cited in several places, but
critically.
It
is said by some, as by Anaxagoras and other of the physicists, that this
antithesis exists from the beginning in the germs or seeds; for the germ, they
say, comes from the male while the female only provides the place in which it
is to be developed, and the male is from the right, the female from the left
testis, and so also that the male embryo is in the right of the uterus, the
female in the left. Others, as Empedocles, say that the differentiation takes
place in the uterus; for he says that if the uterus is hot or cold what enters
it becomes male or female, the cause of the heat or cold being the flow of the
catamenia, according as it is colder or hotter, more ‘antique’ or more
‘recent’.
Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals (BookⅣ), translated by Arthur Platt
Joyce might have transformed this passage.
In correspondence with the novel and the
motif in The Odyssey, the maternity hospital is on the island of
Trinakie, the island of the sun god. Trinakie Island - Trinacria is another
name for Sicily. Therefore, Empedocles was called in here.
Incidentally, Mr. Bloom states in Episode 15 that his right testicle is heavier and both are on the right side of his
trousers. (U388.1300)
ZOE: How’s the
nuts?
BLOOM: Off side.
Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.
One in a million my tailor, Mesias,
says.
All of the people listed are
real scholars. I do not know if they supported the mixed theory.
Nicholas Culpeper (1616
– 1654)
English botanist, herbalist, physician and
astrologer.
Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729 - 1799)
Italian naturalist. Founder of laboratory
zoology.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752 - 1840）
German comparative anatomist, zoologist and
anthropologist.
William Thompson Lusk (1838 - 1897)
American obstetrician.
Oscar Hertwig (1849
– 1922 )
German Zoologist.
Christian Gerhard Leopold (1846 - 1911)
German gynecologist.
Giulio Valenti (1860
- 1933）
Italian physician and embryologist.
As I was writing this, I realized that combining "Blumenbach" and "Leopold" gives us
the name of our main character, Leopold Bloom. So Joyce is playing a joke here.
In the seventh issue of this blog, I wrote
that the novel Ulysses and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
have a surprisingly large number of similarities.
In that movie, the spaceship Discovery,
which sails the long way from Earth to Jupiter, is modeled after the shape of a
sperm. The crew member, Bowman, becomes a embryo (star child) on his bed at the
end of the film.
Meanwhile, regarding the conception of Episode
14 of the novel, Joyce stated in a letter to Frank Budgen, dated March 20,
1920. ” Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital is the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo."
Thomas Henry Huxley was an English
zoologist who was active in the advocacy and defense of Darwinism. He was the
grandfather of Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), known to literature lovers as author of Brave New World .
A passage from his essay;
Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine.
I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of
successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time.
Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse
ingenuity of a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple words
in which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth and sixth
days of the Creation.
Thomas Henry Huxley, On A Piece Of Chalk
Empedocles by Luca Signorelli
"Empedocles" by █ Slices of Light █▀ ▀ ▀ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The method of this blog ⇒ Here
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