Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

162
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Nicolaas A. Rupke
cautious agnosticism – just barely – by sympathetically quoting St. Augustine who had
raised the possibility of an autochthonous origin of plants and animals following the
flood, to explain the occurrence of life on remote islands (Humboldt 1845, 345-346).
Humboldt's first German biographer, Hermann Klencke, also toyed with the "third way"
in thinking about the origin of species. He interpreted the creation story of Genesis 1 as
an allegory and derided the notion of evolutionary transmutation as laughable nonsense.
Every species, every type represented an independent and separate idea in nature, and
Klencke conceived of the origin of species and of humans in particular as a process of
germination of "Keime" under particular conditions of humidity and temperature
(Klencke 1850, 38-39). Humans had not originated as a single pair in one location but
autochthonously on the tablelands of Asia, Africa, America and Europe (Klencke 1854,
192-194).
Further afield, Alphonse de Candolle, too, in his Géographie botanique raissonnée (1855),
while prevaricating, toyed with the notion of autochthony. How were the many plant
forms that have succeeded each other in the course of earth history connected – by
means of a material bond ("liaison matérielle") or did they constitute new creations that
were independent of preceding ones ("des créations de formes nouvelles indépendentes
des précédents") (Candolle 1855, xiii))? New creations had been produced either by an
unknown physical law working on inorganic matter, or by an external power creating
something out of nothing or possibly out of inorganic matter. In either case, the moment
of creation had features we can not see, touch or even comprehend, and lay outside our
range of observation. The origin of species was therefore "extra-natural." Also the notion
that species evolved, one from another, still had to resolve the problem of the origin
of the earliest form of life from lifeless matter. Moreover, it multiplied the number of
extra-natural moments innumerable times by supposing species transmutations, which,
however, we never saw (Candolle 1855, 1107).
To plant geographers, the attractiveness of autochthonous generation existed in the
fact that it helped explain the existence of "floral provinces." Distribution areas of plants
could be thought of as produced by "Schöpfungscentren" or "Schöpfungsherde," locations
where particular plant species had come into being. This line of thought was followed
by the Humboldtian botanist and Göttingen University professor August
[Heinrich Rudolf] Grisebach. While expressing partial agreement with Darwin, Grisebach
continued to argue in 1865 and 1866 essays, i.e., after the appearance of the Origin of
Species, that plant species had come into existence autochthonously, at various locations
across the globe, and that this mode of origin was of crucial significance in explaining
geobotanical patterns (Grisebach 1872, vol. 1, 1-9; 1880, 274; 1880, 307-334).
A systematic re-examination of the primary literature is likely to add more names to
this list, also for the French-speaking world. In Britain, among the leading scientists who
appeared inclined towards the theory of autochthonous generation was Charles Lyell. In
fact, Lyell was cited in support of autochthony by both Bronn (1858, 78) and Vogt
(1859, 366-368). In the second volume of his Principles of Geology (1832) Lyell had famously
criticised Lamarck's theory of transmutation, upheld the constancy of species,
and speculated that, on the basis of a gradual, uniformitarian rate of extinction and origin
of species, in a region the size of Europe, only once every 8000 years or more a mammal