Question

Explain the phenomenon of inheritance by Vapour and Fluid theory.

Answer 1

        Vapour and fluid theory:

• Early Greek philosophers speculated that the hereditary informations of parents existed in the form of vapours of fluids.
• Pythagoras (500 B. C.) speculated that a moist "vapour" descended from the brain, nerves and other body organs of the male during the coitus and from these vapours an embryo was formed in the uterus of the female.
• According to him, the male transmitted all the characters of the embryo and the female does not.
• However, another Greek philosopher of the same age.
• Empedocles thought that both parents contributed equally to the embryo and each parent produces a "semen" which arises directly from various body parts.
• After 200 years, another Greek philosopher Aristotle forwarded a highly imaginative speculation that the semen of the male had certain vitalizing" or "dynamic" effect and it was supposed to be highly purified blood.
• According to him, the female furnished the inert building material, while the male gives the motion and new life to the material.
  
  

           

Vapour and Fluid theory:

• According to this theory, Empedocles proposed that each part of the  produces a fluid.