Sex in the flesh.
This response to Michael Stolberg argues that the occasional piece of evidence for sexual dimorphism in Renaissance anatomy does no damage to what I had earlier called the "one-sex model." There are three reasons for this: a considerable amount of such evidence had long been available; stray observations do not discredit worldviews; and new supporting evidence for the one-sex model was also available. Moreover, illustrations in the purportedly paradigm-altering texts in fact support the old model. Since there was no radical change during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the reasons offered by Stolberg for why it happened then are moot. The view that biology grounded two sexes (the two-sex model) replaced the view that it reflected imperfectly an underlying metaphysical truth (the one-sex model) as part of the epistemological revolution of the Enlightenment.
Laqueur
Thomas W
TW
Department of History, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-2550, USA.
D000715:Anatomy / Q000266:history*; D000716:Anatomy, Artistic / Q000266:history; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D005835:Genitalia / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008488:Medical Illustration / Q000266:history; D008597:Menstrual Cycle; D012727:Sex Characteristics