Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Neither Creation nor Evolution
life sciences in Germany were part of a paradigm of origins that centred on the notion of
autochthonous abiogenesis. This was the leading theory of the origin of species at the
time that Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, adhered to in Germany by several of Darwin's
friends-to-be and in England sympathised with by some of his closest colleagues.
Yet, as pointed out in the introduction, it never entered the history books about theories
of the origin of species. The question should be asked how such "forgetting" could have
happened?
Of course, our picture of the past, both individual and collective, involves forgetting
as well as remembering, and omissions of one kind or another are an inevitable and integral
part of historiography (e.g., Schinkel 2004, 45-48). Yet the phenomenon of forgetting
may prove significant when one considers the political purposes that can lie hidden
behind historians' amnesia, and in this case, I believe, there existed such a purpose. Several
of the major as well as the minor figures who objected to creation/transmutation
have entered the history books, yet not as the outspoken autochthonists they were but as
forerunners of Darwin. For example, Ballenstedt, Tauscher and Voigt have been described
as a "Triumvirat" of early-nineteenth century advocates of the theory of evolution
and as predecessors of Darwin (Schindewolf 1941; 1948, 91). A worse misidentification
has taken place in the case of Ritgen, who has been described as a creationist who
nevertheless also helped pave the way for Darwin's theory of evolution (Bühne 1992,
176-183). Burmeister, too, has been inadequately characterized as an anti-Darwinist
rather than properly as an autochthonist (Montserrat 2001, 4-5). Because Bronn helped
translate Darwin's Origin of Species into German, he has acquired a reputation as a Darwinist,
and Vogt more emphatically yet has been put forward as a follower/forerunner of
Darwin, these reputations having been retroactively extended to cover the entire career
of the two men (Baron 1961; Vogt 1896, 129-137). Even Humboldt, who died shortly
before the Origin of Species saw the light of day, was turned by Emil Heinrich Dubois-
Reymond into a "pre-Darwinian Darwinist" (see Rupke 2005, 63).
The historiography of theories about the origin of species was to a large extent inspired
by the success of Darwin's magnum opus, and Darwin himself set the trend by adding
to the fourth edition of the Origin of Species (1864) a "Historical sketch on the progress
of opinion on the origin of species" in which he provided a template for the forerunner
historiography of his theory, constructing a "creation-vs-evolution" model: "Until recently
the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions,
and had been separately created. This view has been ably maintained by many authors.
Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo modification,
and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true generation of preexisting
forms" (Darwin 1988, xiii). In the introductory sketch Darwin then identified
and discussed the people who had preceded him in formulating species variability and
natural selection. Ever since, the production of "forerunners of Darwin" literature has
not ceased, and the preoccupation with "predecessors" has never quite ended. The craze
reached a climax during the 1959 centenary of the Origin of Species, when even Owsei
Temkin, who more than any author of secondary literature on Darwinism came close to
identifying the theory of autochthonous mega-generation, turned his discussion of pre-
Darwinian spontaneous generation into a "forerunners of Darwin" story (Temkin 1959).
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
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