---
title: "History of beliefs about the human body"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beliefs_about_the_human_body"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:39:27.496821+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Greek philosophers separated the body and the energy of the body into separate but equal and interacting categories. Aristotle defined the energy which gives the body its movement as the soul. The soul and the body are therefore linked but can remain separate entities. This is in refutation of Dualists who view the body and mind as separate states and should be treated and examined differently and Materialists who view all parts of the body, even the soul as having a physical manifestation in the body. Aristotle finds the middle ground and accepts both of these views, that the soul has aspects that cannot be felt by normal methods, and physical manifestations that can be felt.  "For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality" — Aristotle in De Anima
Aristotle forms the idea of Hylomorphism, that the soul and the body are not capable of being split apart without destroying both in the process. Despite this idea of the body and the soul Aristotle viewed disorder in what could be seen and felt. He was a proponent of the humoral theory that classified disorder as imbalances of the 4 fluids of the body. Aristotle was unable to dissect humans but did so to many animals and was an early founder of comparative anatomy. Aristotle did contend quasi spiritual manifestations of the body principally through sexual distinctions. He wrote that the sex of humans:
“is determined by the male principle already contained in the semen. If this is not strong enough, then the opposite must necessarily come into existence, and the opposite of man is woman.”

Aristotle clearly superimposed man as the more important figure in men and women but presents an almost Qi like representation of how sexes are defined. Aristotle presents it as a physical manifestation in semen, but in context to his descriptions of the soul and body it is not clear that he meant something physical.

== European Judeo-Christian ==
European ideologies of the body define disorder as only things that can be touched or explored. If something could not be explored then intrusions into these areas were performed. Therefore, the body in Greek and European cultures is defined as being ailed by something physical, something that can be found and altered to produce order. Judeo-Christian ideologies have heavily influenced the definitions of the body and its disorders and therefore the male body is often explained in place of the female body.

=== The one-sex body model ===

A major intervention in the history of the body in the West was Thomas W. Laqueur's 1990 book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Laqueur argued that from the eighteenth century into the late twentieth, Western societies had generally thought of humans as having two fundamentally sexes, male and female. But Laqueur argued that from ancient times, the prevailing intellectual understanding of sex was that women were anatomically simply an inferior form of men. For example, Renaldus Columbus, writing about what he proposed as the discovery of the clitoris, stated that, "like a penis, "if you touch it, you will find it rendered a little harder and oblong to such a degree that it shows itself as a sort of male member." (There was much debate on the actual discovery of the clitoris between male European scientists and many claimed to have described it first: by dissecting the human body and writing down what was observed these European scientists could claim in their idea of the body that they had discovered or created new knowledge.) This one-sex model was seen as consistent, in Abrahamic thought, with the Genesis creation narrative, in which Eve is formed from Adam's rib.
Laqueur's argument has been enormously influential on the history of the body in the West, and applied by historians to a range of societies outside Laqueur's original scope, such as medieval Iceland. However, scholars specialising in pre-eighteenth-century history have often been critical of the idea that the one-sex body really was dominant in everyday life, or even in intellectual circles.

=== The Vitruvian Man ===
The Vitruvian Man is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci that depicts the European ideal of a man. The figure is extremely muscular and focuses on the exterior of the body, what can be seen and felt. This was the standard of beauty of humans and continues to be the ideal body of European traditions. There is no Vitruvian women.

== Medical body in East Asian medical literature ==

Eastern ideologies of the body explain what can be detected, not only felt and examined. This comes from the idea that there is not only what can be physically seen and touched but what cannot be. Energy or more aptly the means by which your body can manifest itself in the world cannot be seen but, was thought to  be able to be detected. Definitions of the body and its disorders therefore focus on physical manifestations of energy through the body. This is mostly seen in Traditional Chinese medicine and has today been explained in physical ways by modern science. The ideal body of east Asian medical literature was not muscular and instead focused on key energy manifestations in the body for directed therapy.