The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German BiologyTeleological thinking has been steadfastly resisted by modern biology. And yet, in nearly every area of research biologists are hard pressed to find language that does not impute purposiveness to living forms. The life of the individual organism, if not life itself, seems to make use of a variety of strate gems in achieving its purposes. But in an age when physical models dominate our imagination and when physics itself has become accustomed to uncertainty relations and complementarity, biologists have learned to live with a kind of schizophrenic language, employing terms like 'selfish genes' and 'survival machines' to describe the behavior of organisms as if they were somehow purposive yet all the while intending that they are highly complicated mechanisms. The present study treats a period in the history of the life sciences when the imputation of purposiveness to biological organization was not regarded an embarrassment but rather an accepted fact, and when the principal goal was to reap the benefits of mechanistic explanations by finding a. means of in corporating them within the guidelines of a teleological fmmework. Whereas the history of German biology in the early nineteenth century is usually dismissed as an unfortunate era dominated by arid speculation, the present study aims to reverse that judgment by showing that a consistent, workable program of research was elaborated by a well-connected group of German biologists and that it was based squarely on the unification of teleological and mechanistic models of explanation. |
Contents
From Vital Materialism to Developmental Morphology | 54 |
Teleomechanism and the Cell Theory | 112 |
The Functional Morphologists | 156 |
Worlds in Collision | 195 |
Teleomechanism and Darwins Theory | 246 |
Epilogue | 276 |
309 | |
Other editions - View all
The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German ... T. Lenoir Limited preview - 1982 |
The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German ... T. Lenoir No preview available - 1982 |
The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German ... T. Lenoir No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
according animal forms approach argued ascidians Baer's view Bergmann and Leuckart Bildungstrieb biological organization Blumenbach capable causal cell theory chemical affinities chemistry comparative anatomy completely conception constructed Cuvier Darwin's demonstrated developmental morphologists discussion Döllinger DuBois-Reymond elements embryo embryology emerge Ernst von Baer evolution explanation Friedrich functional germ germ layers germinal disc gill arches Göttingen heat Helmholtz Ibid important inorganic investigation Johann Friedrich Meckel Johannes Müller Kant Kant's Karl Ernst Keime and Anlagen Kielmeyer laws Lebenskraft Liebig material exchange mechanical Meckel morphology nature Naturphilosophie nineteenth century notion organic form organic realm organized body original ovum particles particular phenomena physical physiology position principle problem processes produce purposive organization Rathke reductionists Reil result Rudolph Wagner Schwann species structure substance teleological framework teleomechanism teleomechanists transformation variations vertebrates vis viva vital force vital materialists vitalistic von Baer whole Wolffian body zoology