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prepares, elaborates, and makes use of the material, all at the same time; the processes of formation and growth are simultaneous ... all its parts are not fashioned simultaneously, but emerge in their due succession and order ... Those parts, I say, are not made similar by any successive union of dissimilar and heterogeneous elements, but spring out of a similar material through the process of generation, have their different elements assigned to them by the same process, and are made dissimilar ... all its parts are formed, nourished, and augmented out of the same material.[21] Actually, Harvey's exposition of epigenesis, albeit clear, is not totally impressive, since it is largely a reflection of Aristotle's influence. The main importance of Harvey's vigorous and cogent defense of epigenesis is that it provided some kind of counterbalance to the increasingly dominant preformationist interpretations of embryonic development. Harvey did not break with Aristotelianism; on the contrary, he lent considerable authority to it. Unable to escape the past, he was not completely objective in his study of generation. Everywhere the pages of his book reveal his indebtedness to past authorities. Robert Willis, who provided the 1847 translation of _De Generatione_, expresses this well: [Harvey] ... begins by putting himself in some sort of harness of Aristotle, and taking the bit of Fabricius between his teeth; and then, either assuming the ideas of the former as premises, or those of the latter as topics of discussion or dissent, he labours on endeavouring to find Nature in harmony with the Stagyrite, or at variance with the professor of Padua--for, in spite of many expressions of respect and deference for his old master, Harvey evidently delights to find Fabricius in the wrong. Finally, so possessed is he by scholastic ideas, that he winds up some of his opinions upon animal reproduction by presenting them in the shape of logical syllogisms.[22] Even Harvey's concept of the egg reveals a strong Aristotelian bias. Actually, Harvey attained to his conclusion that all animals derive from eggs by assuming that on the same grounds, and in the same manner and order in which a chick is engendered and developed from an egg, is the embryo of viviparous animals engendered from a pre-existing conception. Gener
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