pretergeneration

English

Noun

pretergeneration (plural pretergenerations)

1. (rare) Preternatural generation; monstrous birth
   • 1958, Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: The seventeenth century:

     In the Novum Organum Bacon made a threefold division of natural history: the first being concerned with species, the second with monsters, and the third with artificial products; or the history of generation, pretergeneration and arts.

   • 2019, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science, page 183:

     Because Bacon does not provide any analysis of pretergenerations in his natural histories, I claim that the process of generating artificial individuals that deviate from their species exhibits important aspects of Bacon's view on how nature is constrained and deviated from its own course.

References

• James A. H. Murray [et al.], editors (1884–1928), “Dictionary”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volumes VII (O–P), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 1329, column 2.;