Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

164
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Nicolaas A. Rupke
maturity. Writing popular books about natural history and propagating in these a secular
theory of origins represented a form of socio-political renewal. "Miraculous creation," by
contrast, stood for the old order of absolutism, feudalism and monarchy, and the creationist
Wagner indeed defended these, abhorring the Revolution of 1848, which he interpreted
as divine punishment for the secularisation of society (Soulimani 1999, 102-
113).
The doctrine of autochthonous generation formed a common ground where the heterogeneous
constituency of the liberal-to-radical left in science could meet – a "common
context" for a latitudinarian variety of non-Mosaic opinions and values, ranging from
idealist to mechanistic-materialist ones. 29 The issue that in the post-Origin years proved
the most contentious, namely the descent of humans from apes, was kept off the scientific
agenda, because Homo sapiens was said to have originated, like all other species, directly
from "the earth." Autochthonous generation had well-defined socio-political coordinates.
Vogt in particular was always as much a political agitator as a pioneering scientist,
and his attack on creationism doubled as an attack on the Prussian monarchy. In his
Zoologische Briefe (1851b, 13-16) he attributed the emergence of new, fruitful directions of
scientific research to political revolutions. The French Revolution had led to the factbased
theories of Cuvier. The Revolution of 1848 was leading again to further fact-based
scientific advances. Linneus had founded his classification on external morphological
features; Cuvier had improved upon him by using internal, anatomical structures of adult
individuals; the latest advances added the embryonal development: "[A]t present a new
direction is similarly blazing a trail, on the development of which the Revolution of 1848
is probably destined to exert an equally fertile influence as the one of 1789 on the Cuvierian.
After all, everywhere one has become aware of the fact that political storms engender
the most powerful intellectual stimulus, switching to other areas – of art and
science, of trade and industry – as soon as the area of political action becomes blocked
off [by reactionary political developments]." 30
Historiographical Significance
To sum up: the theory of autochthonous generation was present at a range of leading
institutions of higher education across the German-speaking world, at Berlin, Erlangen,
Giessen, Göttingen, Jena, Heidelberg, Zürich and, yet further afield, in Geneva. Especially
Giessen appears to have been a hotbed of autochthony, and the theory's connection
with organic chemistry and the latter's applications to agriculture and physiology
deserve further study. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the flourishing earth- and
29 The notion of a common context was put forward by Robert Young in the late 1960s and applied to
British scientists and their shared adherence to natural theology (Young 1985, 126-163).
30 "… so bricht sich jetzt eine neue Richtung Bahn, auf deren Entwickelung die Revolution von 1848 vielleicht
bestimmt ist einen ähnlichen befruchtenden Einfluß zu üben, wie diejenige von 1798 [sic] auf die
Cuvier'sche. Hat man doch überall bemerkt, daß durch politische Stürme die mächtigste geistige Anregung
erzielt wird, die sich auf andere Gebiete, der Kunst und der Wissenschaft, des Handels und der Industrie
wirft, sobald ihr dasjenige des politischen Handelns verschlossen wird" (Vogt 1851b, 16).