Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Neither Creation nor Evolution
Burmeister was infamous for a certain arrogant stubbornness that made him stick to
opinions, once he had formed these (Pooth 1966, 370). His view on autochthonous generation
formed no exception to this rule, and he did not change his position in the later
editions of his Geschichte der Schöpfung, not even when Darwinism had arrived in Argentina
(Montserrat 2001; Salgado and Floria 2001) , relegating a single expression of disagreement
to a brief footnote. In the last edition of his Geschichte der Schöpfung (1872), Burmeister
merely corrected himself with respect to the issue of the spontaneous generation of
entozoa, which he admitted does in fact not happen, insisting at the same time that the
different conditions that had reigned during primordial times justified the assumption of
the abiogenetic origin of species (Burmeister 1872, 352).
Figure 2. Heinrich Georg Bronn
(Junker 1991, p. 207).
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
149
Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1862) (Figure 2)
Equally explicit with respect to autochthonous
mega-generation as Burmeister was none other
than one of the greatest palaeontologist of the period,
Georg Heinrich Bronn, who from 1833 was
professor of natural science at Heidelberg. He did
fundamental work in the systematics of fossils, his
Lethaea geognostica (1835-38; later edns) as well as the
Index palaeontologicus (third part of the Handbuch einer
Geschichte der Natur, 1841-43) being for many years
essential reference works in the field. Bronn's
Untersuchungen über die Entwickelungs-Gesetze der organischen
Welt während der Bildungs-Zeit unserer Erd-
Oberfläche (1857) won the prize of the Academy of
Sciences of Paris in answer to a prize question, set
in 1850 and repeated in 1854, about the nature of
the fossil record (Bronn 1858, 1859). Bronn formulated
a number of general laws of paleontological
history, stressing progressive development towards
increased complexity that followed a definite plan.
Like Cuvier, he focused on adaptation to environment but diverged from the Cuvierian
tradition by emphasizing that changes had been gradual. The course of life had been
determined by a "terripetal" law, organic adaptations having kept pace with the evolution
of the earth's crust, from pelagic to littoral, coastal and finally continental environments.
meister 1848, 314). "Nimmt man dagegen mehrere Autochthonen an verschiedenen Stellen der Erde an,
denen alle eine gleiche typische Idee zum Grunde lag, was der spezifischen Uebereinstimmung wegen gewiß
der Fall war, so stoßen wir durchaus nicht auf irgend eine Schwierigkeit bei der Erklärung der wahrnehmbaren
Unterschiede" (Burmeister 1848, 552).
7 "Wenn wir demgemäß annehmen, daß die ersten Geschöpfe nicht unmittelbar in vollendeter Gestalt entstanden,
sondern vielmehr in normaler Weise als jugendliche, unvollkommene Individuen unter Processen,
die dem heutigen Entwickelungsgange ähneln, sich bildeten; so haben wir damit sogleich Alles gesagt, was
über ihren Ursprung füglich sich sagen läßt, und können demnach in die Einzelheiten ihres Bildungsganges
nicht weiter eingehen" (Burmeister 1848, 316).