Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

156
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Nicolaas A. Rupke
more parsimonious. And he had good reason to be, because his theory of autochthonous
generation itself had theological as well as nature philosophical antecedents.
Among the earliest writers to advance the theory of autochthonous generation were
two relatively minor figures, namely August Michael Tauscher, an independent scholar
("Privatgelehrter") whose claim to legitimacy as a naturalist was his membership of the
Imperial Society of Sciences in Moscow, and Johann Georg Justus Ballenstedt, a scientifically
engaged Lutheran pastor. In 1818, unbeknown to one another, they each published
a treatise promoting the notion that species were not created once by divine interference
but continuously by natural processes that, however, operated according to divinely
enacted laws (Ballenstedt 1818; Tauscher 1818). Ballenstedt discussed the two
books in his short-lived periodical Archiv für die neuesten Entdeckungen aus der Urwelt, expressing
the joint view that the origin of new species, also of higher animals, was a process
that had continued up to the present day (Ballenstedt 1819). The process of nature's
creation was continuous, not restricted to the six days of Genesis 1. 18 Ornithorhynchus, the
duck-billed platypus, for example, was a form of life that most likely had come recently
into being rather than that it had recently been discovered. Continuous generation took
several forms, namely bastardisation, domestication, spontaneous generation of infusoria
and parasitic entozoa, and the periodic origin de novo of new species in the wake of revolutionary
changes on the surface of the earth. Humans as well as the higher animals had
originated as products of a major "Erdrevolution." 19 Today's species lived on top of the
remnants of older, extinct but similar forms, and this continuity of form could be due to
the existence of a fixed number of lasting models ("Muster") or organic archetypes ("organischer
Urformen"), according to which actual organisms are structured.
On one point the two authors diverged. Whereas Tauscher saw a close similarity between
his view and the Mosaic creation story, Ballenstedt did less so and in particular
took issue with Tauscher's belief in the origin of humans from a single pair. More likely –
Ballenstedt argued – humans had originated in various independent forms across the
world, which explained the existence of different races. In a later work Die Vorwelt und die
Mitwelt (1824), he reiterated that there were no grounds for assuming the unity of the
human race, whether in the sense of Adam and Eve in Paradise or of Noah and his family
after the Deluge. Humans may well form a single species, but they were of multiple,
autochthonous origins – a polygenetic species. 20 Moreover, these origins had not been as
single pairs, because carnivores would have readily exterminated them. Nor had they
involved thousands of individuals, because there would not have been sufficient food for
so many. Both authors were concerned, however, to make sense of the biblical creation
18 Thus "continuous creation," as used by Ballenstedt, meant that the origin of species had not been a oneoff
event but was a continuing sequence of spontaneous generations. As such, the expression had a different
meaning from the one given to it by later process theologians (see above).
19 "Die Erzeugung von Menschen und Thieren größerer Art ist nur das Werk einer allgemeinen Erdrevolution,
dergleichen bei dem Untergange der Urwelt statt fand" (Ballenstedt 1819, 267).
20 "Denn wenn auch alle Menschen nur zu Einer Species oder Art gehören, wie man behauptet, so folgt
daraus doch nicht, daß sie alle von einem und demselben Paare und aus einem Lande herstammen. Konnte
denn nicht die Natur auf mehrern Punkten Menschen von einerley Art entstehen lassen? Mußte es also nicht
gleich anfangs mehrere Stämme und Raçen von Menschen geben?" (Ballenstedt 1824, xi).