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Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

German biologist (1834–1919)

The son of a government lawyer, Haeckel was born at Potsdam in Germany and educated at the universities of Warburg, Vienna, and Berlin, where he qualified as a physician in 1858. His main interests lay elsewhere and, after a brief period in practice, he moved to Jena to study zoology. In 1862 he was appointed professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Jena, a position he held until his retirement in 1909.

Haeckel's contributions to zoological science were a mixture of sound research and speculation often with insufficient evidence. An advocate of monism, which postulated a totally materialistic view of life as a unity, he based his evolutionary ideas on the embryological laws expounded by Karl von Baer. Expanding the idea of his mentor, Johannes Müller, Haeckel argued that the embryological stages of an animal were a recapitulation of its evolutionary history, and indeed that there had once been complete animals resembling the embryonic stages of higher animal forms living today. He formulated a scheme of evolution for the whole animal kingdom, from inorganic matter upward. His studies, with Müller, of marine life, particularly the crystalline radiolarians, encouraged him to compare the symmetry of crystals with the simplest animals, and led him to postulate an inanimate origin for animal life. In 1866 Haeckel anticipated later proof of the fact that the key to inheritance factors lies in the cell nucleus, outlining this theme in his Die Perigenesis der Plastidule (1876; The Generation of Waves in the Small Vital Particles).

Haeckel also proposed the idea that all multicellular animals derived from a hypothetical two-layered (ectoderm and endoderm) animal, the Gastraea – a theory that provoked much discussion. He engaged in much valuable research on marine invertebrates, such as the radiolarians, jellyfish, calcareous sponges, and medusae, and wrote a series of monographs on these groups based largely on specimens brought back by the Challenger Expedition. He was also the first to divide the animal kingdom into unicellular (protozoan) and multicellular (metazoan) animals. An ardent Darwinist, Haeckel made several zoological expeditions and founded the Phyletic Museum at Jena and the Ernst Haeckel Haus, which contains his books, archives, and other effects.

In 1906 the Monist League was formed at Jena with Haeckel as its president. The League held a strong commitment to social Darwinism. Man was seen as part of nature and in no way qualitatively distinct from any other organic form. Human society was as much a creation of natural selection as the bird's wing. To such views Haeckel added a strong anticatholicism, a contempt for politicians, and a forecast of impending doom. After the chaos of World War I, Haeckel's views were taken up by eugenicists, the Volk movement and, more significantly, the National Socialists.

 
 
Biography: Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

The German biologist and natural philosopher Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834-1919) was famous for his work in evolutionary theory, especially the construction of phylogenetic trees. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries he was as famous as Charles Darwin, whom he admired, though his views were closer to those of Jean Baptiste Lamarck.

Ernst Haeckel was born in Potsdam, Germany, on February 16, 1834, to Carl and Charlotte (Sethe) Haeckel. His father was the chief administrator for religious and educational affairs in Merseburg, while his mother was the daughter of a privy councillor in Berlin. Haeckel thus had the social advantage of growing up in an educated and cultured family. He was publicly educated at the Domgymnasium in Merseburg, graduating in 1852. He then, on the advice of his parents, studied medicine at Berlin, later at Würzburg and Vienna, before returning to Berlin to earn his medical degree in 1857.

In 1858 he passed the state medical examination, but he did not practice medicine. In fact, he had never been truly interested in being a physician, only pursuing that degree for his parents' sake. Yet he discovered, after initial reluctance, that medical school would provide him with the most solid foundation on which to build a scientific career. It was in this medical training that Haeckel met many of the most important biologists of his day. At Würzburg he studied under Albert von Kölliker and Franz Leydig, learning embryological and comparative anatomy as well as perfecting his skills in microscopical investigations - later to prove essential for his research in ontogeny and phylogeny.

It was also at Würzburg that Haeckel's philosophical views began to develop, confronted as he was by mechanistic and materialistic views of life developed by Rudolf Virchow and Carl Vogt and expressed by young scientists and physicians with whom he came into contact. In response to such strongly asserted materialism Haeckel's own Christian beliefs began to be transformed, and though he never relinquished the idea of god, his own god was eventually so radically changed that it seemed scarcely personal, perhaps nothing more than the principle of causality in the universe. Meanwhile, his medical education continued. At Berlin in 1854-1855 Haeckel studied under Johannes Müller, whom he greatly respected as the paradigm of the great scientist. Under Müller, he increased his understanding of comparative anatomy and he was introduced to marine zoology, one of Müller's specialties.

In 1858, after finishing his medical studies and final examination, Karl Gegenbaur offered him the chance of a future professorship in zoology at Jena if he would first undertake a zoological research expedition in the Mediterranean. This research occupied his time from 1859 to 1860 and resulted in the publication in 1862 of The Radiolarians, in which he announced his support of Darwinism. Haeckel determined to reinterpret all of morphology (study and comparison of animal forms) in terms of the theory of evolution, which meant the linking of animal species phylogenetically through "geneological" trees. He argued that all processes could be reduced to mechanical-materialistic causes, that evolution was driven by such causality, and that the true philosophy of nature should be Monism, a system stressing the unity of mind and matter, in contrast to all vitalistic or teleological dualism stressing the separation of mind and matter. He differed from Darwin in two fundamental ways - Haeckel's was the more speculative mind, and he relied much more upon the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics than Darwin ever did.

Also in 1862, Haeckel married his cousin, Anna Sethe, who died in 1864, at which time he married Agnes Huschke, daughter of anatomist Emil Huschke. They had three children. In 1861, upon his return from his research expedition, Haeckel had been given the post of Privatdozent at the University of Jena. In 1862 he was named professor extraordinary in comparative anatomy and was made director of the Zoological Institute. And in 1865 a chair in zoology was established for him, which he held until 1909. During that more than 40 year period Haeckel continued his herculean labors on behalf of his science, going on four major scientific expeditions (Canary Islands, 1866-1867; Red Sea, 1873; Ceylon, 1881-1882; Java, 1900-1901) and further elaborating on his evolutionary schemes.

In 1901 he was the recipient of the Turin Bressa Prize for his outstanding work in biology. Throughout his life he received many honors and was elected to many scientific societies, among them the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna (1872), the American Philosophical Society (1885), and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1888). His most characteristic ideas and tendencies are evident in his early work of 1886, General Morphology - all his subsequent efforts were reworkings of this book. He retired in 1909 and still lived in Jena when he died in 1919.

Further Reading

For a short but excellent intellectual and biographical sketch of Haeckel, see Georg Uschmann's article in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 6. E. W. MacBride also wrote a short article in Nature 133 (1934) on the centenary of Haeckel's birth. Daniel Gasman in his Scientific Origins of National Socialism (1971) explored the way in which the Nazi's used Haeckel's ideas to support their own political ideology. For Haeckel's personal evolutionary views, see his General Morphology (1866).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel, 1870.
(click to enlarge)
Ernst Haeckel, 1870. (credit: The Bettmann Archive)
(born Feb. 16, 1834, Potsdam, Prussia — died Aug. 9, 1919, Jena, Ger.) German zoologist and evolutionist. After receiving a degree in medicine in 1857, he obtained a doctorate in zoology from the University of Jena, and from 1862 to 1909 he taught zoology at Jena. His work concentrated on diverse marine invertebrates. Influenced by Charles Darwin, Haeckel saw evolution as the basis for an explanation of all nature and the rationale of a philosophical approach. He attempted to create the first genealogical tree of the entire animal kingdom. He proposed that each species illustrates its evolutionary history in its embryological development ("Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"). Through his theories of the evolution of humans, he brought attention to important biological questions. Through his numerous books, he was an influential popularizer of evolutionary theory.

For more information on Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel, visit Britannica.com.

 
German Literature Companion: Ernst Haeckel

Haeckel, Ernst (Potsdam, 1834-1919, Jena), was professor of zoology at Jena from 1862 to 1909 and devoted himself to the advancement of Darwin's views. He formulated the so-called ‘biogenetic law’ (biogenetisches Grundgesetz), according to which each living creature passes in its embryonic stage through all the phases through which the species has evolved. His zoological writings include Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868), Anthropogenie (1874), and Der Kampf um den Entwicklungsgedanken (1905). In a philosophical work intended for laymen as well as specialists (Die Welträtsel, 1899) Haeckel rejected dualism (including Christianity) and propounded a monistic philosophy, which is virtually pantheistic. At a late stage in his academic career Haeckel published 2 vols. describing his extensive zoological travels, Kunstformen der Natur (1904) and Wanderbilder (1905). These are illustrated by his own paintings and drawings.

 
Philosophy Dictionary: Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich (1834-1919) German biologist and polymath., and passionate Darwian. Philosophically Haeckel advocated a ‘neutral monism’ rejecting free will and theism; also, following the idealist strand in German thinking, he advocated the fundamental unity of organic and inorganic nature in ‘a sort of pantheism’. He is famous for the (incorrect) statement that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. Here ontogeny is the the development of the embryo, and phylogeny the evolution of the species; the claim is that the embryo of every species repeats the evolutionary development of that species, which is not true.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich
(ĕrnst hīn'rĭkh hĕ'kəl) , 1834–1919, German biologist and philosopher. He taught (1862–1909) at the Univ. of Jena. An early exponent of Darwinism in Germany, he evolved a mechanistic form of monism based on his interpretation of Darwin's theories and set forth in his speculative popular works on science, Generelle Morphologie (1866), The History of Creation (1868, tr. 1906), and The Evolution of Man (1874, tr. 1910). Although many of his conclusions have been proved erroneous, they attracted a large following and stimulated research. He developed a theory of recapitulation, illustrated by his gastraea theory, wherein he postulated a hypothetical ancestral form (gastraea) represented by the gastrula stage of individual development. He is known also for his study of invertebrate marine organisms, especially the Radiolaria and sponges.
 
Wikipedia: Ernst Haeckel

Written by ajmanitara

Ernst Haeckel
ErnstHaeckelDW.jpg
Born February 16 1834(1834--)
Died August 9 1919 (aged 85)
Nationality Flag of Germany Germany
Ernst Haeckel.
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Ernst Haeckel.

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 — August 9, 1919),[1] also written von Haeckel, was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist. Ernst Haeckel named thousands of new species (see below), mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista (details below). Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial "recapitulation theory" claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (see below).

The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-color illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Artforms of Nature"). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträthsel (1895-1899, in English, The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträthsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching[2] to support teaching evolution.

In the United States, Mount Haeckel, a 13,418-ft (4,090 m) summit in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, overlooking the Evolution Basin, is named in his honor, as are another Mount Haeckel, a 2,941-m (9,649-ft) summit in New Zealand; and the asteroid 12323 Häckel.

The Ernst Haeckel house ("Villa Medusa") in Jena, Germany contains a historic library.

Life

Sea anemones from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) of 1904.
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Sea anemones from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature) of 1904.
Ernst Haeckel: Christmas of 1860 (age 26)
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Ernst Haeckel: Christmas of 1860 (age 26)

Ernst Haeckel was born on February 16, 1834, in Potsdam (then part of Prussia). [3] In 1852, Haeckel completed studies at Cathedral High School (Domgymnasium) of Mersburg.[3] He then studied medicine in Berlin, particularly with Albert von Kölliker, Franz Leydig, Rudolf Virchow (with whom he later worked briefly as assistant), and with anatomist-physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1801-1858).[3] In 1857, Haeckel attained a doctorate in medicine (M.D.), and afterwards he received a license to practice medicine. The occupation of physician appeared less worthwhile to Haeckel, after contact with suffering patients.[3]

Haeckel studied under Carl Gegenbaur at the University of Jena for three years, earning a doctorate in zoology,[3] before becoming a professor of comparative anatomy at the University of Jena, where he remained 47 years, from 1862-1909. Between 1859 and 1866, Haeckel worked on many "invertebrate" groups, including radiolarians, poriferans (sea sponges) and annelids (segmented worms).[4] During a trip to the Mediterranean, Haeckel named nearly 150 new species of radiolarians.[4] [4] Haeckel named thousands of new species from 1859 to 1887. [5]

From 1866 to 1867, Haeckel made an extended journey to the Canary Islands and during this time, Haeckel met with Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell.[3] In 1867, he married Agnes Huschke. Their son Walter was born in 1868, their daughters Elizabeth in 1871 and Emma in 1873.[3] In 1869, he traveled as a researcher to Norway, in 1871 to Dalmatia, and in 1873 to Egypt, Turkey, and to Greece.[3] Haeckel retired from teaching in 1909, and in 1910 he withdrew from the Evangelical church.[3] Haeckel's wife, Agnes, died in 1915, and Ernst Haeckel became substantially more frail, with a broken leg (thigh) and broken arm.[3] He sold the mansion Medusa ("Villa Medusa") in 1918 to the Carl Zeiss foundation.[3] Ernst Haeckel died on August 9, 1919.

Politics

Haeckel's writings and lectures were later used to provide scientific justifications for racism, nationalism, and social Darwinism.

Haeckel's statement that "politics is applied biology", has been quoted in support of various Nazi philosophies. The Nazi party used not only Haeckel's quotations, but also Haeckel's broader philosophy of "Monism," which they used as justification for racism, nationalism and social Darwinism.[4]

Haeckel extrapolated a new religion or philosophy called "monism" from evolutionary science. In his monism, which postulates that all aspects of the world form an essential unity, all economics, politics, and ethics are reduced to "applied biology." He also suggested that the development of races paralleled the development of individuals. He advocated the idea that primitive races were in their infancies and needed the supervision and protection of more mature societies.

"First World War"

Haeckel was the first person known to coin the term First World War. Shortly after the start of World War I, Haeckel wrote:


“ There is no doubt the the course and character of the feared "European War"...will become the first world war the full sense of the word.

Indianapolis Star September 20, 1914[6]

 ”

This the first known instance of the term First World War, which had previously been recorded as 1931 for the earliest usage.

Research

Haeckel (left) with Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, his assistant, in the Canaries, 1866.
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Haeckel (left) with Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, his assistant, in the Canaries, 1866.

Haeckel was a zoologist, an accomplished artist and illustrator, and later a professor of comparative anatomy. Although Haeckel's ideas are important to the history of evolutionary theory, and he was a competent invertebrate anatomist most famous for his work on radiolaria, many speculative concepts that he championed are now considered incorrect. For example, Haeckel described and named hypothetical ancestral microorganisms that have never been found.

He was one of the first to consider psychology as a branch of physiology. He also proposed many now ubiquitous terms including "phylum", "phylogeny", "ecology" ("oekologie"),[5] and proposed the kingdom Protista[3] in 1866. His chief interests lay in evolution and life development processes in general, including development of nonrandom form, which culminated in the beautifully illustrated Kunstformen der Natur (Art forms of nature). Haeckel did not support natural selection, rather believing in a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism). [7]

Haeckel advanced the "recapitulation theory" which proposed a link between ontogeny (development of form) and phylogeny (evolutionary descent), summed up in the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". His concept of recapitulation has been disputed in the form he gave it (now called "strong recapitulation").[8] He supported the theory with embryo drawings that have since been shown to be oversimplified and in part inaccurate, and the theory is now considered an oversimplification of quite complicated relationships. Haeckel introduced the concept of "heterochrony", which is the change in timing of embryonic development over the course of evolution.

Haeckel was a flamboyant figure. He sometimes took great (and non-scientific) leaps from available evidence. For example, at the time that Darwin first published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), no remains of human ancestors had yet been found. Haeckel postulated that evidence of human evolution would be found in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and described these theoretical remains in great detail. He even named the as-of-yet unfound species, Pithecanthropus alalus, and charged his students to go find it. (Richard and Oskar Hertwig were two of Haeckel's many important students.)

One student did find the remains: a young Dutchman named Eugene Dubois went to the East Indies and dug up the remains of Java Man, the first human ancestral remains ever found. These remains originally carried Haeckel's Pithecanthropus label, though they were later reclassified as Homo erectus.

Romanes (1892) copy of Haeckel's controversial embryological drawings. Haeckel's embryos were shown on a black background, with lighter shading in the figures: It is claimed Haeckel emphasised the similarities unduly.
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Romanes (1892) copy of Haeckel's controversial embryological drawings. Haeckel's embryos were shown on a black background, with lighter shading in the figures: It is claimed Haeckel emphasised the similarities unduly.

"Infamous" embryo drawings

It has been claimed (Richardson 1998, Richardson and Keuck 2002) that some of Haeckel's embryo drawings of 1874 were fabricated.[9] [10] There were multiple versions of the embryo drawings, and Haeckel rejected the claims of fraud but did admit one error which he corrected. It was later said that "there is evidence of sleight of hand" on both sides of the feud between Haeckel and Wilhelm His, Sr..[11] The controversy involves several different issues (see more details at: recapitulation theory).

Some creationists have claimed that Darwin relied on Haeckel's embryo drawings as proof of evolution[12] [13] [14] implying that Darwin's theory is therefore illegitimate and possibly fraudulent. This claim ignores the fact that the Darwin published the "Origin of the Species" in 1859, and "The Descent of Man" in 1871, whereas Haeckel's famous embryo drawings did not appear until 1874 (8 species). In "The Descent of Man" (1871) Darwin used only two embryo drawings, neither taken from Haeckel[15].

It has been claimed that Ernst Haeckel sent a letter to the January 9 1909 publication of "Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung" (translated: "Munich general newspaper") which reads, translated: "a small portion of my embryo-pictures (possibly 6 or 8 in a hundred) are really (in Dr Brass’s sense of the word) “falsified” — all those, namely, in which the disclosed material for inspection is so incomplete or insufficient that one is compelled in a restoration of a connected development series to fill up the gaps through hypotheses, and to reconstruct the missing members through comparative syntheses. What difficulties this task encounters, and how easily the draughts- man may blunder in it, the embryologist alone can judge."

Publications

Kunstformen - plate 72: Muscinae
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Kunstformen - plate 72: Muscinae
Kunstformen - plate 96: Chaetopoda
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Kunstformen - plate 96: Chaetopoda

Haeckel's literary output was extensive, working as a professor at the University of Jena for 47 years, and even at the time of the celebration of his sixtieth birthday at Jena in 1894, Haeckel had produced 42 works with nearly 13,000 pages, besides numerous scientific memoirs and illustrations. [16]

Haeckel's monographs include: Radiolaria (1862), Siphonophora (1869), Monera (1870) and Calcareous Sponges (1872), as well as several Challenger reports: Deep-Sea Medusae (1881), Siphonophora (1888), Deep-Sea Keratosa (1889), and another Radiolaria (1887), the last being illustrated with 140 plates and enumerating over four thousand (4000) new species.[16]

Among his many books, Ernst Haeckel wrote General Morphology (1866); Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868, in English, The Natural History of Creation reprinted 1883); Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre (1877, in English, Freedom in Science and Teaching) in reply to a speech in which Virchow objected to the teaching of evolution in schools, on the grounds that evolution was an unproven hypothesis;[16] Die systematische Phylogenie (1894, "Systematic Phylogeny"), which has been considered as his best book,[16] Anthropogenie (1874, 5th and enlarged edition 1903), dealing with the evolution of man; Die Welträthsel (1895-1899, also spelled Die Welträtsel ("world-riddle"), in English The Riddle of the Universe, 1901);[16] Über unsere gegenwärtige Kenntnis vom Ursprung des Menschen (1898, translated into English as The Last Link, 1808); Der Kampf um den Entwickelungsgedanken (1905, English version, Last Words on Evolution, 1906); Die Lebenswunder (1904, "Wonder of Life"), a supplement to the Riddle of the Universe; also books of travel, such as Indische Reisebriefe (1882, "Travel notes of India") and Aus Insulinde: Malayische Reisebriefe (1901, "Travel notes of Malaysia"), the fruits of journeys to Ceylon and to Java; Kunstformen der Natur (1904, Artforms of Nature), with plates representing detailed marine animal forms; and Wanderbilder (1905, "travel images"), with reproductions of his oil-paintings and water-color landscapes.[16]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Ernst Haeckel - Britannica Concise" (biography), 
        Encyclopædia Britannica Concise, 2006, Concise. Britannica.com webpage:

    "wpext">CBritannica-Haeckel.

  2. ^ 1877, English 1879, ISBN 1410211754.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Ernst Haeckel" (article), German Wikipedia, October 26, 2006, webpage: DE-Wiki-Ernst-Haeckel: last paragraph of "Leben" (Life) section.
  4. ^ a b c d
  5. ^ a b "Rudolf Steiner and Ernst Haeckel" (colleagues), Daniel Hindes, 2005, DefendingSteiner.com webpage: Steiner-Haeckel.
  6. ^ "The Yale Book of Quotations" (2006) Yale University Press, edited by Fred R. Shapiro
  7. ^ Ruse, M. 1979. The Darwinian Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  8. ^ Richardson and Keuck, (Biol. Review (2002), 77, pp. 495-528) show that it is a simplification to suppose that Haeckel held the recapitualtion theory in its strong form. They quote Haeckel as saying "If [recapitulation] was always complete, it would be a very easy task to construct whole phylogeny on the basis of ontogeny. ... There is certainly, even now, a number of lower vertebarte animals (e.g. some Anthozoa and Vermes) where we are authorised to interpret each embrylogical form directly as the historical representation or portrait-like silhouette of an extinct ancestral form. But in a great majority of animals, including man, this is not possible because the infinitely varied conditions of existence have led the embryonic forms themselves to be changed and to partly lose their original condition (Haeckel, 1903: pp. 435-436)"
  9. ^ Michael K. Richardson. 1998. "Haeckel's embryos continued." Science 281:1289, quoted in NaturalScience.com webpage Re: Ontogeny and phylogeny: A Letter from Richard Bassetti; Editor's note.
  10. ^ "While some criticisms of the drawings are legitimate, others are more tenditious", Richardson and Keuck "Haeckel's ABC of evolution and development", Biol. Rev. (2002), 77, pp. 495-528. Quoted from p. 495.
  11. ^ Richardson & Keuck 2001. See for example, their Fig. 7, showing His's drawing of the forelimb of a deer embryo developing a clef, compared with a similar drawing (Sakurai, 1906) showing the forelimb initially developing as a digital plate with rays. Richardson & Keuck say "Unfortunately His's embryos are mostly at later stages than the nearly identical early stage embryos illustrated by Haeckel [top row of Haeckel's famous drawing]. Thus they do not inform the debate and may themselves be disingenuous.", p. 518.
  12. ^ "Darwin relied on the work of German biologist Ernst Haeckel ... Darwin based his inference of common ancestry on the belief that the earliest stages of embryo development are the most similar. Haeckel's drawings, however, entirely omit the earliest stages ...", Jonathan Wells, Survival of the Fakest, The American Spectator, Dec 2000-Jan 2001. Note however, Darwin (1871) credits Huxley with the idea of comparing the embryos and quoted a statement by T. Huxley, that it is "quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape ..." (from Huxley's Man’s Place in Nature, 1863, p. 67). Note the subtle difference between Huxley’s claim – the final stages are most different - and what has been said Darwin relied on via Haeckel – that the earliest stages are the most similar.
  13. ^ "The Controversy over Evolution in Biology Textbooks" (Texas, Textbooks and Evolution), Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin (President), Probe Ministries, 2003, Probe.org webpage: ProbeOrg-Textbook-Controversy: mentions Haeckel drawings.
  14. ^ "Haeckel's embryos" (of drawings, with detailed quotes by Haeckel & others), Tony Britain, 2001, AntiEvolution.org webpage: AE-myths.
  15. ^ Darwin's footnote to Fig. 1 in The Descent of Man (1871) reads "The human embryo (upper fig.) is from Ecker, 'Icones Phys.,' 1851–1859, tab. xxx. fig. 2. This embryo was ten lines in length, so that the drawing is much magnified. The embryo of the dog is from Bischoff, 'Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hunde-Eies,' 1845, tab. xi. fig. 42 B. This drawing is five times magnified, the embryo being 25 days old. The internal viscera have been omitted, and the uterine appendages in both drawings removed. I was directed to these figures by Prof. Huxley, from whose work, 'Man's Place in Nature,' the idea of giving them was taken. Häckel has also given analogous drawings in his 'Schöpfungsgeschichte.' " Note that Darwin mentions the scale of his drawings, whereas Haeckel has been charged with making all his embryos the same size as a deceptive move. Similarly Darwin mentions what is missing (internal viscera and uterine appendages), whereas Haeckel did not.
  16. ^ a b c d e f "Biography of Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, 1834-1919" (article), Missouri Association for Creation, Inc., based on 1911 Britannica, webpage: Gennet-Haeckel: life, career & beliefs.

References

  • Charles Darwin (1859). On the Origin of Species (by Means of Natural Selection). London: John Murray. 
  • Charles Darwin (2003 edition). The Origin of Species (with introduction by Julian Huxley). Signet Classics. ISBN 0-451-52906-5. 
  • Ernst Haeckel, Freedom in Science and Teaching (1879), reprint edition, University Press of the Pacific, February 2004, paperback, 156 pages, ISBN 1-4102-1175-4.
  • Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation (1868), translated by E. Ray Lankester, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1883, 3rd edition, Volume 1.
  • Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur ("Artforms of Nature"), 1904, (from series published 1899-1904): over 100 detailed, multi-color illustrations of animals and sea creatures.
  • Richard Milner, The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins, Henry Holt, 1993.
  • Michael K. Richardson, "Haeckel's embryos continued" (article), Science Volume 281:1289, 1998.
  • Richardson, M. K. & Keuck, G. (2001) "A question of intent: when is a 'schematic' illustration a fraud?," Nature 410:144 (vol. 410, no. 6825, page 144), March 8, 2001.

Further reading

  • Art Forms from the Ocean: The Radiolarian Atlas of 1862, by Ernst Haeckel, Prestel Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-7913-3327-5.
  • Works by Ernst Haeckel at Project Gutenberg.
  • Richardson, Michael K., "Haeckel, embryos, and evolution," Science Vol. 280, no. 5366 (May 15, 1998) p. 983, 985-986.

External links

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Persondata
NAME Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES von Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August; Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August von
SHORT DESCRIPTION German biologist and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 16 1834(1834--)
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam, Prussia
DATE OF DEATH August 9 1919
PLACE OF DEATH


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Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ernst Haeckel".  Read more

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