Organography of plants, especially of the Archegoniata and Spermaphyta / by Dr. K. Goebel ... authorized English edited by Isaac Bayley Balfour.

  • Karl Ritter von Goebel
Date:
1900-05
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Organography of plants, especially of the Archegoniata and Spermaphyta / by Dr. K. Goebel ... authorized English edited by Isaac Bayley Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    GENERAL DIFFERENTIATION OF THE PLANT-BODY r. INTRODUCTION. MORPHOLOGY AND ORGANOGRAPHY. The botanical text-books of the day endeavour to arrange all that we know about plants in three sections—Morphology, Anatomy, and Physio- logy. The first two of these are sometimes combined as the morphology of the external and the internal members of plants. This however runs counter to the original signification of the word ‘ Morphology.’ We owe the term morphology to Goethe. He says 1: ‘ Scientific men in all time have striven to recognize living bodies as such, to understand the relations of their external visible tangible parts, and to interpret them as indications of what is within, and thereby in some measure to gain a comprehensive notion of the whole. . . . We find therefore in the march of art, of knowledge, and of science, many attempts to found and construct a doctrine which we may name the morphologyl It is quite evident then that morphology does not deal merely with the distinction and the naming of the outer parts of plants, although this, which really belongs to termino- logy* has been in part incorrectly called morphology. Morphology does demand the knowledge of the different appearances of the members of the plant-body, but only as a means to an end ; it requires, not isolated facts, but the relation of facts to one another. Terminology can be based on the study of dried plants, but morphology has, as Goethe stated, to do with Giving bodies/ which are Goethe, Bildung und Umbildung organischer Naturen.