Abstract
From ancient times, man has sought to understand what underlies the divergent body forms of men and women. Aristotle (ca 350 BCE) theorized that the semen determines the form of the embryo, and is the driving force towards maleness, whereas the female provides the nurturing environment; sex determination is decided upon by a battle between these two factors for supremacy (Josso 2008). Whilst this is not how sex determination works, Aristotle was surprisingly close to the mark in terms of suggesting the existence of a male factor that determines the gender of the fetus.
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Smith, L.B., McEwan, I.J. (2013). Recent Understanding of Masculinization. In: Testosterone: From Basic Research to Clinical Applications. SpringerBriefs in Reproductive Biology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8978-8_2
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