Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Neither Creation nor Evolution
would disappear and emerge, making it a difficult process to authenticate (Lyell 1830-33,
vol. 2, 182-183). Lyell did not specifically state that he believed in a natural origin of
species but later admitted that he left this to be inferred (Lyell 1881, vol. 1, 467). Bronn,
for one, did infer just that and attributed to Lyell the view that species past, present and
future had been/were being/would be originated by primordial generation ("Urerzeugung")
(Bronn 1858, 78), in a slow and imperceptible process of change of the
world's fauna (Bronn 1843, 40-41).
Both Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley, before they joined the
Darwinian cause in the wake of the appearance of the Origin of Species, expressed doubts
about species variability. Huxley, in his notoriously scathing review of Vestiges strenuously
opposed "transmutation" (Huxley 1854) as well as divine guidance and intervention.
In a review of Candolle's Géographie botanique raisonnée Hooker expressed agreement
with Huxley (Hooker 1856, 252) but at the same time prevaricated on whether multiple
creations or creation by transmutation had taken place (Hooker 1856, 151-157, 248-256).
It is likely that in the cases of Hooker and Huxley, as in the German instances of pre-
Origin scientists, the combination of anti-miraculous creation and anti-transmutation
went hand in hand with an open-mindedness re the possibility of autochthonous generation.
To be sure, in the English-speaking world there were far fewer adherents to the theory
of autochthonous generation than in Germany. Secularisation of science was less
advanced, and creationism continued to be a firmly held belief, not least at Oxbridge. In
such a context, the tenets of Naturphilosophie, which by this time had become outdated in
Germany, represented in London a cutting-edge force of modernization, promoted by
Richard Owen and various other scientists of repute. One indication of this was the appearance
of an English translation of Oken's Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie under the title
Elements of Physiophilosophy (1847) (Rupke 1994, 151, 187, 230). The accompanying notion
of species transmutation was not considered old hack but revolutionary, a "Victorian
sensation" (Secord 2000).
Thus the "politics of evolution" in the English-speaking world differed from what it
was in Germany. In London, forces of radical socio-political reform latched on to Lamarckism
(Desmond 1989). In Berlin and other German university cities, by contrast,
the revolutionaries were more likely to be autochthonists who ridiculed Lamarck. Burmeister
and Vogt belonged to the liberal-to-radical left in politics. They were "Fortyeighters,"
who sympathised with or also took part in the Revolution of 1848 with its
programme of German national unification coupled with demands for democratic reform
(after 1859, many of the "Forty-eighters" went over to Darwinism (Junker 1995)).
Both men were members of the "Deutsche Nationalversammlung," Vogt prominently
so. In 1849, Burmeister entered the Prussian Parliament where he represented the extreme
left. His later emigration to Argentina has been attributed ultimately to Burmeister’s
disillusionment with the reactionary political developments at home that followed
(Pooth 1966, 364-366). Vogt was more radical yet and, having been accused of high treason
and dismissed from his chair, was – as mentioned above – forced into exile (Best
1998). To these men, science was an essential part of the political reform programme and
had to be spread among the German Volk as part of the people's education to political
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