3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

History of Biology 347
of life history studies. He was interested in the phenomenon of organic diversity
and searched for causes, asking why-questions. However, his belief in a more or
less perfect world precluded any thought in evolution.
Specialization by biologists on particular groups of animals like birds (Turner,
Belon) or fishes (Rondelet) occurred during the 16th century, when the encyclopedists
Gessner and Aldrovandi published series of large volumes. During the
time of Linnaeus (1707–1778) the emphasis on classifying and name-giving led to
a near obliteration of all other aspects of natural history until G. Buffon’s Histoire
naturelle (1749–1783) reversed this trend. He painted vivid word-pictures of the
living animals with no concern for classification or identification. But Linnaeus
and Buffon approached each other in later years: Linnaeus liberated his views on
the fixity of species and Buffon defined species as reproductive communities. The
latter’s views on species and classification (all characters should be taken into consideration)
was adopted by many scientists around 1800. The history of taxonomy
is a history of concepts like species, relationship, delimitation of higher taxa, reliable
characters, ranking of taxa and others. As Mayr emphasized, this field has
rarely been given credit for its role in initiating new approaches in biology.
The 18th century concept of the scala naturae, the scale of perfection, received its
final blow, when Cuvier in 1812 showed that there are four distinct phyla of animals
without any connection. In search of a higher order in nature some scientists of
the early 19th century experimented with “quinarian” classifications (based on the
number 5), while others preferred the number 4. This approach to classification
was already obsolete, when Charles Darwin introduced classifications based on
common descent with his book, On the Origin of Species (1859).
Darwin and Darwinism
During his historical studies Mayr developed an almost unbounded admiration for
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and discussed his work and its influence on modern
thought in numerous articles and books. He emphasized Darwin’s statement “I was
a born naturalist.” As a boy and student Darwin was interested in many activities
like collecting, fishing, and hunting. He observed the habits of birds, collected
insects and learned a great deal from Professor Henslow. When Darwin joined the
“Beagle” in 1831, he was already a very capable naturalist. The Galapagos experience
and, upon his return to England, his discussions with the ornithologist John
Gould in March 1837 converted him to become an evolutionist, especially through
his surprising discovery that most animals on Galapagos, although of American
character, are endemic to this group of islands, in that they are not found in either
North or South America. These endemic animals (whether species or subspecies)
must have originated (“evolved”) on the Galapagos Islands from American immigrants
(Sulloway 1982: 349). For the next 20 years, Darwin collected evidence for
the theory of evolution, but did not publish anything on this subject because of the
need to accumulate massive support for his materialistic (nomological) theories
and, Mayr (1972d) felt, because of Darwin’s awe of Charles Lyell’s opposition to the