Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Neither Creation nor Evolution
Aires zoologist Hermann Burmeister, the Heidelberg paleontologist Heinrich Georg
Bronn, and the Giessen and Geneva zoologist Carl Vogt.
Figure 1. Karl Hermann Burmeister
(Burmeister 1872, frontispiece).
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
147
Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister (1807-1892)
(Figure 1)
Burmeister's career took place in two major stages. In
Germany he acquired a reputation as an entomologist,
in 1842 becoming professor of zoology at Halle University.
An admirer and protégé of Alexander von Humboldt,
he undertook major journeys of exploration to
South America. In 1861 he emigrated to Argentina,
becoming the following year director of the Museo
Público in Buenos Aires (Argentina's National Museum
of Natural History) (Birabén 1968; Ulrich 1972; Streicher
1993). In 1843 he published the popular Geschichte
der Schöpfung, which between its year of first publication
and 1872 enjoyed eight editions, as well as a Dutch,
French, and Spanish translation (Salgado and Floria
2001). Burmeister interpreted the history of life on earth
as a teleological process towards Homo sapiens, of which
the successive steps had been progressive and had
shown adaptation to changing environmental condi-
tions – an at the time widely accepted interpretation of the paleontological record. The
consecutive stages of organic development had not evolved one from the other but
originated independently in a process of ideal types becoming incarnated through secondary
laws. Species were fixed and had originated from "elemental raw materials" (Burmeister
1848, 311), i.e., in a process of abiogenesis. Burmeister admitted that scientific
evidence for the occurrence today of spontaneous generation is weak but assumed that
the process was real nevertheless, because no incontrovertible proof to the contrary existed
and the only alternative to this natural process of origins would have been divine,
miraculous intervention, which however ran counter to the results of science. 2 The possibility
of an abiogenesis of all species was indicated by the fact that at present infusoria
and parasitic entozoa still seemed to originate in a process of "Urbildung." In the past all
2 "Letztere [the advocates of spontaneous generation] lehren nämlich, von jenem Entstehen fremder Organismen
in anderen ausgehend, die Möglichkeit des Entstehens aller Organismen auf dieselbe Weise in frühester
Zeit, und nehmen für jetzt nur die Bildungsfähigkeit niedriger, unvollkommen entwickelter organischer
Körper aus elementaren Stoffen an. Ob diese Annahme einen positiven Grund habe, steht gegenwärtig
noch dahin, wenn sich gleich die meisten Stimmen der Zeitgenossen dawider erklären; wir wollen sie indeß
einstweilen beibehalten, weil in der That kein einziger streng wissenschaftlicher Gegenbeweis vorliegt, und
ohne dieselbe das Entstehen der Organismen auf der Erdoberfläche nur durch unmittelbares Eingreifen
einer höheren Macht denkbar ist, dafür aber aus dem ganzen übrigen Entwickelungsgange des Erdkörpers
kein hinreichendes Motiv nachgewiesen werden kann, vielmehr ein solches unmittelbares Eingreifen der
Gottheit allen anderen wissenschaftlichen Resultaten widerspricht" (Burmeister 1848, 312).