The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat.

  • Ospovat, Dov.
Date:
1995, ©1981
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Notes to pp. 11 J-2 2 ly used to describe theories of transmutation, such as those of Chambers and Lamarck. Some transmutationists had as little sense for morphologi¬ cal or historical development as Bonnet displayed in his scale of nature; and on the other hand the only real development the majority of mor- phologists admitted was the observable development of the embryo. 4 Wallace and Chambers both drew on paleontological laws worked out by Owen and others, and Spencer found the inspiration for his view of progressive evolution in the lectures and writings of Owen, Carpenter, and von Baer. Alfred Russel Wallace, On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species; On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, pp. 268-79; [Robert Chambers], Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, p. 212; Vestiges, 10th ed., pp. 147-54; Herbert Spencer, Progress, pp. g-io; Spencer, The Filiation of Ideas, pp. 541-2. 5 Very general representations of archetypes were often employed also by those who favored a linear conception of nature - several of the Naturphilosophen, for instance. On the notion of ideal types as it developed in late-eighteenth-century Germany, see Timothy Lenoir, Generational Factors in the Origin of Romantische Naturphilosophie. 6 The work of Victor Audouin on articulates is an exception (Recherches Anatomiques sur le Thorax des Animaux Articulés et Celui des Insects Hexapodes en Particulier). Audouin is of the same generation as von Baer, Owen, and Milne Edwards and might well have been included in the present discussion. Geoffroy, for all his contributions to morphology, seems to have had no very clear conception of an archetype. On early-nineteenth-century morphology see Russell, Form and Fumtion, pp. 52-101. 7 Karl Ernst von Baer, Ueber Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere, vol. 1, plate 3 (reproduced in Russell, Form and Function, p. 119). 8 Von Baer, Entwickelungsgeschichte, 1:199-262; see also Ueber das äussere und innere Skelet; Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Niedern Thiere; and Entwickelungsgeschichte, 2:57-102. 9 On recapitulation, see Stephen J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, pp. 33-52- 10 For an interesting exception, see Toby Appel, Henri de Blainville and the Animal Series. 11 Lorenz Oken, Elements of Physiophilosophy, pp. 491-4. See Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, pp. 39-45. 12 Von Baer, Entwickelungsgeschichte, 1:207-8. I have generally followed Huxley's translation of the Fifth Scholium, which I will cite as Huxley, trans., From the Works of von Baer. The reference above is to pp. 195-7- 13 Ibid., p. 220 (Huxley, trans., From the Works of von Baer, pp. 209-10). 14 Ibid., pp. 221-5 (Huxley, trans., From the Works of von Baer, pp. 211-14). 15 Ibid., pp. 230-1 (Huxley, trans., From the Works of von Baer, pp. 219-20). 256