The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation.

The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation. By Clara Pinto-Correia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, 396 pages. Cloth, $29.95.

Reviewed by Joe A. Thomas, Ph.D., Clarion University of Pennsylvania, Department of Art, Clarion, PA 16214.

Before there was embryology, or genetics, or microbiology, there was preformation and epigenesis. As the two dominant theories of human generation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the debate between these contentious schools of thought was part of a long struggle to understand the mechanism of reproduction. As these ideas have given way to modern theories of embryology and biology, the earlier solutions to the problem have been treated with a skepticism that ranged from patronizing to derisive. But Clara Pinto-Correia aims to change all that, especially with regard to preformation.

As opposed to the supporters of epigenesis--who hypothesized that life arose from formless matter--the preformationists reasoned that all life, especially human life, was "preformed" at the moment of Creation; that successive generations of individuals were encased, one inside the other, in increasingly small and perfectly formed versions of their adult selves. The heyday of the preformationists was roughly 1600-1800; they were led by such scientific luminaries as Paracelsus, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Jan Swammerdam, Charles Bonnet, Albrecht von Haller, and the famous Dutch naturalist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, commonly credited with the invention of the microscope.

Pinto-Correia's project is to take a more serious look at these preformationists and their theories than has previously been the case. Preformationism has entered the canon of the history of science as something of a joke, its theories of homunculi (tiny figures observed inside sperm) and the aura seminalis (a mysterious energizing essence in semen) treated as the subjects of ridicule. Pinto-Correia seeks to remedy the smug dismissal of these early scientists and their theories by means of a thorough history and analysis of preformation, its supporters, and its role in the development of modern scientific thought. Seen in proper perspective, preformation seems far less ridiculous and far more ingenious than modern historians of science would have us believe.

Pinto-Correia begins by establishing and explaining the two schools of thought within preformation, which she labels the ovists and the spermists. The ovists believed that the female egg provided the source of human life; the spermists favored the male sperm for this responsibility. She explains how the earliest preformationists could only be ovists, because sperm cells had not yet been observed. She enlivens her discussion--not only here, but throughout the book--by framing it around the personalities of the early scientists who devised and refined these theories. From its beginnings in the sixteenth century with Paracelsus, to its eclipse by spermism in the late seventeenth century, to its revival in the eighteenth century, the various theories of the ovists are laid out for the reader as an elaborate and fascinating epic full of twists, turns, and humorous anecdotes. Likewise, Pinto-Correia's narrative of the rise of spermism begins with Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of sperm cells (a type of animalcule for the early microscopists) and continues with exciting tales of professional rivalries among early scientists and naturalists. Pinto-Correia establishes the religious and philosophical context for the spermist hypothesis, pointing out the theological and cultural problems that arose in theorizing that all of humanity was encased in the organs of woman, which this thoroughly Christian society regarded as "the weaker sex." These arguments are interwoven with a description of the scientific and technical difficulties with spermist assertions (including the spermists' problems in explaining the vast number of "wasted" sperm cells). The rest of her book explores various issues tangential to or influential on the development of these preformation theories. One chapter discusses the struggle to come to terms with the nature and structure of sperm cells, including the method by which they contributed to fecundation. Another problem for the preformationists was the occurrence of "monsters." Persons born with defects, bizarre animals, and other freaks of nature seemed incongruous in a system where the infallible, divine Creator encased all future generations within the first.

A primary focus for the ridicule of later generations of scientists has been the homunculus, the "little man" seen to be hiding within the sperm by the microscopist and spermist Nicolas Hartsoeker. Pinto-Correia devotes an entire chapter to tracing the history of this idea and to correcting modern distortions of Hartsoeker's claims. The ovists' ability to strengthen their own argument by correlating the egg with the philosophical and cosmic perfection of the circle is also explained, along with the frenzy for quantification during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Pinto-Correia's account of preformation and the people who theorized it is a consistently fascinating historical narrative. The publisher classifies the subject as the history of science; however, it more properly belongs to the history of ideas. Pinto-Correia is less concerned with the technical, "scientific" aspects of preformation's many faces than she is with its organic development, the waxing and waning of contending schools of thought during this complex episode in intellectual history. Her book goes far beyond a mere chronology, however. In order to rehabilitate (as it were) preformation theory, she reconstructs a complex historical context, delving into religion, philosophy, literature and history. Her arguments are refreshingly free of the almost obligatory use of fashionable gender theory that plagues many such studies by authors outside the history of science. Michel Foucault and his tiresome equation of sex and power are nowhere to be found--not even in the thorough and useful bibliography that follows the text. One might argue that this weakens her text, rendering it theoretically uninformed. The author's intent, however, is to tell a story, not to impose a theoretical structure onto history. And this she does admirably well.

In many ways The Ovary of Eve recalls Camille Paglia at her erudite best in books such as Sexual Personae (1990). Both authors have the ability to pull together seemingly disparate pieces of information in a thoroughly enlightening way. One of Pinto-Correia's greatest strengths, in fact, is the wide-ranging thoroughness of her research, with ample use of primary sources in many different languages. Pinto-Correia, however, is a more entertaining writer than Paglia. Her prose is a pleasure to read, and she presents her story and ideas clearly and logically. This comfortable, readable style probably reflects her literary background, as she is the author of six novels and several books of poetry (as well as being a professor of developmental biology). What makes this accomplishment even more astonishing is that English is a second language for her (Portuguese being her first).

The book is not without certain flaws, however. Most significant is Pinto-Correia's seeming inability to connect her fascinating excurses on related subjects more directly to her primary topic of preformation. For instance, she spends a great deal of time relating legends of the famous Golem relative to the discussion of the homunculus (pp. 216-19). Yet she never connects the two in any sort of direct way. Similarly, her discussion of "The Music of the Spheres" in Chapter 7 (which ostensibly explains how ideas of the circle's geometric perfection, and thereby its divinity, supported the ovists' arguments) digresses into a long, interesting, but pointless lecture on astrology and astrological symbols (pp. 267-73). It is never clear if any of the ovists even knew or cared about any of these ideas. These important historical connections--the "smoking gun" if you will--are frequently missing from Pinto-Correia's discussion; their absence weakens her arguments that preformation has an internal logic determined by its intellectual and social context.

The author also leaves some intriguing questions unanswered. For instance, societal taboos regarding masturbation seemingly made it difficult for the spermists to study semen. Numerous pamphlets ranting about the dangers of onanism were widespread during preformation's heyday Pinto-Correia discusses this at great length relative to seventeenth-century arguments that Biblical prohibitions on "wasted seed" must mean that semen was the carrier of life--a strong argument for spermism (pp. 85-87; 94-98). How, then, were microscopists able to obtain semen samples? Masturbation seems the obvious choice, yet it was clearly forbidden. Did the investigators that she discusses use their own semen or that of others? The reader really misses an answer to such a question, especially because Pinto-Correia deals so readily with this kind of basic issue in other places.

In fact, the author generally pays a great deal of attention to small, seemingly irrelevant details--and this is part of the charm of her book. Her discussion of the important ovist Lazzaro Spallanzani begins with a mention of his education by a female professor at the University of Bologna, Laura Bassi (also the mother of eight children) (p. 60). Although this has nothing to do with Spallanzani's ovism, it is a fascinating detail that vividly brings to life this important player in the preformationist debates. Pinto-Correia traces the idea of the homunculus all the way up to the twentieth century, to a Tarot deck by the mystic Aleister Crowley that included an image of Hartsoeker's drawing of a sperm with a little man inside (pp. 239-40). This image and many others are found throughout the book, and these numerous illustrations also bring to life this fascinating story. She even includes small contemporaneous portraits of many of the important characters in the preformation debates.

Pinto-Correia opens her book by explaining that her purpose is to reappraise the preformationists on their own terms, to show that they do not deserve their modern disrepute and ridicule for they were working within the bounds of their own time's technology and social context. Their theories, then, can be seen as wonderfully complex structures based on the scientific paradigms of their times. Her book thus demonstrates well Thomas Kuhn's (1962) ideas about shifting paradigms within science--and it does so both clearly and entertainingly. The author's genuine fondness and respect for the preformationists resonates throughout her book. In fact, she concludes by showing that, after all, the preformationists were not all that far off the mark; cannot DNA be seen as a sort of preformation, holding within it the material that will form all future generations? Pinto-Correia's ability to synthesize a diverse range of historical materials and to make it relevant to the modern reader in graceful prose make this book a credit to the literature of the history of science.

REFERENCES

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Paglia, C. (1990). Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Michael R. Steveson, Ph.D.

Department of Psychological Sciences Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306, USA