ABSTRACT
From the point of view of connotation, two attributes constitute Harvey’s meaning of the ovum: first, the origin from moisture enclosed in some membrane or shell; and second, the mode of production whereby life manifests itself as a pattern of developmental stages up to that point when a univocal form emerges, universal for all species, whether plant, insect, bird or animal. Failing to see the phenomena involved in fertilisation, Harvey’s initial datum is the ovum, for this is where concept formation takes place. Forms can be made by chance, by fashioning or by designing, Harvey asserted that only one way of making ‘is properly called generation’, namely, epigenesis, a term he first coined. Although Harvey himself referred to the potter’s art as an example of epigenesis, he recognised that that art cannot provide an adequate representation of making by designing, because it retains one of the main features of Aristotle’s technical model, namely, the distinction between artist and artefact.
