Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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142 Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) Nicolas Robin & Frank Hellwig Voigt, F. S. (1831) Das Thierreich, geordnet nach seiner Organisation: als Grundlage der Naturgeschichte der Thiere und Einleitung in die vergleichende Anatomie/vom Baron von Cuvier. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1831-1843. Wyder, M. (1998) Goethes Naturmodell Die Scala Naturae und ihre Transformationen. Böhlau, Köln Weimar Wien. GSA: Goethe-Schiller Archive / Weimar http://www.Lamarck.net Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank the anonymous referee for the Annals for his suggestions on this paper. We are indebted to Prof. Dr. P. F. Stevens (Arnold Arboretum and Gray Herbarium Harvard) for his constructive corrections and suggestions on the earlier versions of this paper. Address for correspondence: Dr. Nicolas Robin Institut für Spezielle Botanik / SFB 482 Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena Philosophenweg 16 D-07743 Jena, Germany Nicolas.Robin@uni-jena.de
Neither Creation nor Evolution: the Third Way in Mid-Nineteenth Century Thinking about the Origin of Species 1 Nicolaas A. Rupke Abstract A revision of the standard account of nineteenth-century evolutionary biology is proposed. The debate about the origin of species was not merely one of creation versus evolution. There existed a third view, which equated the problem of how species originated with that of how life had commenced. Major and minor scientists alike postulated that species had appeared not as a result of divine fiat nor by the transmutation of one form of life into another, but by the spontaneous generation of their first seeds, germs or primordial embryos from dead matter, a process also referred to as autochthonous generation. Especially in the German-speaking world, until the appearance of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), this was the dominant theory of how plants, animals and humans had come into being. Among the leading autochthonists were Hermann Burmeister, Heinrich Bronn and Carl Vogt. Sympathisers included Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Lyell. One of the empirical foundations of the theory was the observed fixity of species. Added to this was the discovery of repeated extinctions and reappearances of life on earth. The existence of geographical provinces of distribution of plant and animal species seemed to confirm autochthonous origins, and Alphonse de Candolle, Joseph Dalton Hooker and other botanists flirted with the theory. Also the existence of human varieties and their segregated distribution across the globe was attributed to the autochthonous generation of each race. Leading biomedical scientists, among whom Johannes Müller and Rudolf Virchow, worked with the notion of spontaneous species generation. Its philosophical roots greatly varied, from the idealism and vitalism of Naturphilosophie to vulgar materialism. Vogt and other left-wingers linked their belief in the spontaneous emergence of life following Cuvierian earth catastrophes to their support of the Revolution of 1848. In the Origin of Species, Darwin ignored the autochthony view. Following the book's appearance, many autochthonists converted to evolution, and their previous view was written out of the record and "forgotten." Tertium datur: Autochthonous Generation During the middle of the nineteenth century, several eminent biologists and paleontologists rejected both "evolution" and "creation" as modes of the origin of species. They 1 I warmly thank Peter Bowler, Bill Bynum, Thomas Junker and especially David Livingstone and Jim Moore for encouragement and advice. Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005): 143-172 143
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