This chapter argues that women doctors participated in a philosophical tradition of thought in classical antiquity. The widely recognised overlap between medicine and philosophy in ancient Greece means that women with medical expertise were very likely involved in the philosophical aspects of the domain. While no extant writings from women doctors survive, the chapter provides evidence of ancient Greek women’s claims to knowledge as found in the writings of male philosophers and doctors. A picture is reconstructed of expertise not only about the female body and its functions and cycles but also a broader understanding of health, disease, fertility, and their relationship to the natural world. The areas of women’s knowledge covered are: experience of the body, theories of the body, pharmacology and theories of reproduction. It is explained how these count as philosophical and why we must consider these women’s ideas to be a significant part of our intellectual heritage.

Aristotle wrote extensively about the character and behavior of non-human animals in his Historia Animalium. One aspect of character is cognitive abilities. The chapter sets out Aristotle’s views on the cognitive abilities of animals, evidenced also in other works such as the Metaphysics and De Anima. All animals perceive but many also have imagination, memory, and practical intelligence. For Aristotle nonhuman animals have a sort of practical intelligence suited to their particular ways of life. The considerable overlap in cognitive abilities between human and nonhuman animals allows Aristotle to establish a biological basis for many human traits. Many nonhuman animals not only manage to organize their lives and negotiate new challenges but also maintain relationships with each other over extended periods. Social relationships require complex communication and involve a very important type of intelligence which is perfected in the most political of animals, human beings. The chapter ends with an account of how human cognition differs from that which occurs in other animals.

Aristotle’s writings on animals comprise approximately a quarter of his surviving works. There are three lengthy treatises entitled Historia Animalium, On the Parts of Animals, and On the Generation of Animals. Other works on animals include On the Movement of Animals and On the Progression of Animals. In addition to these, a number of short discussions, collectively entitled the Parva Naturalia, focus on the capacities of living beings such as perception, breathing, and sleep. These works form what has been referred to by scholars in the last fifty years as the “biological corpus” of Aristotle. In them we find rich and varied discussions about anything from keenness of sight to egg laying, from parenting skills to dreaming. Much of the content of these works has been consistently marginalized in the history of philosophy.1 Bringing to light Aristotle’s biology as part of his philosophy is the main focus of this collection. This introduction will touch on the history, content, and methodology of these works and Aristotle’s key ideas on the science of living beings.

This chapter provides an overview of the theories of generation and hereditary resemblance found in Aristotle’s work On the Generation of Animals. This treatise completes the project of explaining the development of the perfected living being, which the epigenetic process of embryological development aims for. Aristotle’s explanation of how a new animal comes into being fits to his four-causal scheme, by adding in the more specific principles, male and female. The opponent, thinks Aristotle, is wrong to think that the generative contributions of the parents (seed, sperma) derive from all parts of the body. Instead, what male and female contribute is the most refined nourishment that their bodies produce, which is ready to become all the parts of the body. Male and female roles are then differentiated: the female provides this blood-derived product to serve as that material body (material cause) while the male’s seed is further refined so as to initiate and direct that development as the efficient cause. Aristotle also explains how it is that particular animals end up as male or female and come to resemble their blood relatives. The chapter ends by reflecting on Aristotle’s sexism in his theory of generation.