Hi,

I’m not sure this is actually linked to this list, but I’m looking for a description of how the Mars and Venus symbols became incorporated into biology, and I’m stuck. Can anyone recommend a book or article?
Thanks,
weebee

Well, sorry for this reply, because I dunno either.... if I know what Mars and Venus were chosen for, I may give some theory.... maybe some myth can help?

Maybe. I'm guessing most people know the symbols for female and male (the circle with the arrow, and the circle with the cross). These are also the Greek/Roman signs for the plants of Venus and Mars. I think that during the 1970's the symbols were taken up and used by the women's movement and the gay rights movement and so became widely known. It's been written that the symbols were used in biology (and medicine) prior to the 1970fs and as far as I know there are two ways they could have been taken up. The first is through their use in genetics prior to the use of X and Y to denote female and male. However genetics currently also uses a circle and square for female and male. The second way could be the symbols use in botany, where plants were labelled in diagrams as male and female. Botany might have picked them up from alchemical, and this may have lead to the symbols being used in medicine.

I don't have access to science books from the 1800 onwards so it's hard to check which would be the source, and easier to ask if anyone knows of research into this.

Greeks named stars and constellations and planets in the name of mythological figures (or this is what my myth encyclopedia says). Very likely that same is true for symbols, meaning, first there were symbols for male and female, and then these got attached to planets.

I’m not sure. I think first there was a symbol for Mars and Venis (mothological images) and then they became to represent the essencial male and female (by who is the question). Some writers who state that the symbol of mars is used for male because it is of a man with a shield, and the symbol of Venus is of a woman with a mirror ( I don’t quite see it myself, and I think it has more to do with Mars being the god of war…). The symbol of mars was also used for iron (hard) and Venus for copper (soft). So it might be that Alchemists in the 17 hundreds were using these symbols to represent essences (of metal and humans (male and female). If so it would be quite ironic that the cover of nature uses the symbol of Mars in the art work of the human Y chromosome edition as a representation of the genetic essence of the male.