Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Neither Creation nor Evolution
story in the context of the new Cuvierian history of the earth, and Tauscher's booklet in
particular showed that autochthony was in some ways merely the Genesis account of
creation minus the miracle of supernatural intervention.
The first origin of species, i.e., without "parents," had involved the mixing of materials
from all elements ("durch eine Mischung von Stoffen aus allen Elementen"
(Ballenstedt 1818, 86)). The reason that continuous generation of successively higher
floras and faunas had taken place was that the survival of the higher communities required
the pre-existence of the lower. Trees, for example, need soil, but this had to accumulate
over a period of time through the action of less developed plants, insects etc..
The process of continuous creation had levelled off and today few if any major new
species originated. 21 The procreative force set free by the last geological catastrophe had
lost its vigour and become largely dormant, yet some of it remained. By continuing to
produce certain organisms de novo up to the present day, nature was giving us an indication,
as it were, of how originally the majority of today's species had come into being.
Ballenstedt became carried away with the idea of continuous generation, maintaining
in a later publication that organisms were spontaneously generated not just on land and
in the sea, but also in the air, like hailstones and – he believed – like meteorites. Organic
bodies grow from, and later decompose into, elementary substances. Why should nature,
through a fresh mixture of these substances, not be capable of continuously producing
new forms? Given the fact that the "ocean of air" contains all the elements that make up
organic bodies, should the "Bildungstrieb," "die bildende Kraft der Natur," not be capable
of producing new germs, new seeds, new plants and new animals when the circumstances
happened to be right? Our planet itself was a living organism, not a clump of
dead matter, and the atmosphere in particular contained mechanical, organic as well as
immaterial, electrical forces, capable of producing specific life forms. Products of the air
that were known to have come down in showers included inorganic objects such as meteorites
but also organic products such as caterpillars, butterflies, locusts, and even fish,
frogs, snakes, and tortoises (Ballenstedt 1824, 102).
This verged on nature philosophical fantasy, although Ballenstedt has been counted
among the representatives of the German Enlightenment rather than of Naturphilosophie.
All the same, autochthonous generation had advocates among the latter, too, instances
of which were Friedrich Siegmund Voigt, Ferdinand August Maria Franz von Ritgen,
and Lorenz Oken himself. Voigt was professor of medicine at Jena and director of the
21 "Freylich ist jetzt die bildende Kraft der Natur nicht mehr so thätig und wirksam, als anfangs. Wir sehen
jetzt keine beträchtliche neue Arten von Pflanzen und Thieren mehr in die Reihe der Wesen eintreten und
sie vermehren. Aber man bedenke, wie sehr sich die Umstände geändert haben! Unmögliche Dinge muß
man von der Natur nicht verlangen. Als die große Catastrophe eintrat, welche der jetzigen Schöpfung ihr
Daseyn und Entstehen gab, waren die Umstände dazu viel vortheilhafter. Es ging ein neuer Zeitraum an; es
galt einer neuen Umwandlung und Verneuung unsers Erdballs. Es entstand ein neuer Boden und eine neue
Oberfläche der Erde. Neue, oder jetzt ruhende Kräfte der Natur wurden damals in Thätigkeit und Bewegung
gesetzt. Jetzt nun ist aber alles in Ordnung, hat sich alles gleichsam gesetzt und entwickelt, und geht seinen
ordentlichen Gang fort. Es darf aber nur einmal eine neue allgemeine Revolution und Umkehr auf der Erde
entstehen und eine neue große Catastrophe anfangen; so wird man eine neue Schöpfung anheben sehen,
deren Produkte uns ganz fremd und ein Räthsel sein werden" (Ballenstedt 1818, 90).
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
157