Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Nicolaas A. Rupke
botanical garden, who acquired a reputation for his work in the field of plant systematics
and for his Lehrbuch der Botanik (1827). A contributor with Bronn and other leading scientists
to various encyclopedic manuals of natural history, Voigt produced among his first
publications the Grundzüge einer Naturgeschichte (1817) that marked him as a representative
of the nature philosophical movement in botany and zoology. He nevertheless set himself
apart from the Lamarckians, arguing that variability in plants and animals went no
further than the diversification of genera into species, and that the generic forms had
originated by generatio originaria, like today many lower forms of life still did (Voigt 1817,
418-433, 493-494; see also 1823, 812-817). Applying the nature philosophical reasoningby-analogy
to the geographical distribution of plants, he addressed the question of the
"inner causes" of this distribution. The various vegetations across the globe could not be
explained by a process of dispersion of seeds. Nor should we assume that there had been
a divine gardener who had sown seeds from above. The many tens of thousands of
known plant species had originated autochthonously, but not from the few and simple
soils that cover the surface of the earth. There was a deeper cause, namely the life force
of the earth itself, which, striving outwards in manifold radial directions, had produced
the vegetation and its patterns. The earth should be thought of as the body of an animal,
as it had a soul, a living unifying principle that kept its mass together. Every animal produces
across the surface of its body a pattern of feathers (in birds) or hair (in mammals).
This pattern was produced from within and the cause of distribution of plants across the
globe should be thought of in the same way. 22
Speculations of a similar kind were put forward about the origin of humans, among
others by Ritgen, who was professor of surgery and obstetrics at Giessen and later professor
of psychiatry there. He adhered to a world view of a nature philosophical holism
in the tradition of Carl Gustav Carus, Lorenz Oken and Johann Bernhard Wilbrand
(Bühne 1992, 183-186). Ritgen postulated that the totality of all individualities had simultaneously
been created as potentialities, and that their appearance as realities in the
course of time had happened at moments when this corresponded to their own purpose
and the purposes of all selves. The human form and all human individuals, past, present
and future, existed from the beginning of the world as incorporeal germs. The first entrance
of human individuals into the corporeal world, "without a mother," had probably
taken place in the form of eggs formed in mud and along the shore of a large body of
water. These eggs had combined animal and plant elements, the plant-like features having
consisted of the eggs' leathery covering opening out like the outer layer of a Rafflesia.
This plant connection helped us visualize the growth of primordial human eggs as a
process of fungiform gemmation. 23 The raw materials would have come from the air,
22 "Wenn wir nun durchaus keinen Beweis auffinden können, dass die Vegetation, die unsern Erdball bedeckt,
durch irgend einen Gärtner erst in den Erdboden hineingepflanzt und gesäet worden sey, was bleibt
dann der Vernunft anders übrig, als den ersten Grund ihrer Entstehung von innen heraus anzunehmen?"
(Voigt 1838, 623).
23 "Richtiger dürfte es daher sein, ein im Uferschlamm sich entwickelndes Menschenei anzunehmen und so
die ersten Menschen aus Eiern entstehen zu lassen. Denkt man um ein solches Menschenei nur einige dicke
lederartige Hüllen gelegt, welche wie die Aussendecken der Rafflesia sich entfalten: so schmilzt das Pflanzliche
und Thierische ziemlich gut zusammen. Man wird auf diese Weise eine Pilzknospe und ein Menschenei