Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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166 Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) Nicolaas A. Rupke Of course, Darwin scholarship has greatly diversified since, yet the mid-nineteenth century autochthonists, whether Christian or materialist, have escaped the attention of recent as well as early Darwin scholars. What was the purpose of Darwin and his followers to compose an ever lengthening list of predecessors? One could argue that it was intended by Darwin himself to give fair credit to those who had preceded him. To the later historians of particular forerunners, the purpose may have been to demonstrate the significance of their heroes and of the city, the region or the country to which they belonged. More in general, historians have treated forerunners as part of the context of discovery of Darwin's theory. Yet there existed a further aspect to the forerunner frenzy. The oversimplification of "creation-vsevolution," the misidentification of autochthonists as "creationists" or "evolutionists," and the making up of a long list of "forerunners," served the politics of institutionalisation. First, it strengthened Darwin's position by contrasting his theory with the straw man doctrine of creationism, which among Europe's leading scientists was by then a long-slain dragon. Second, it kept the many supporters of autochthonous generation, who for the most part joined the Darwinian cause, out of the firing line. Darwin's ridicule of the belief in an instantaneous origin of species was directed against the creationists, not the autochthonists, even though his words could, mutatis mutandis, just as well have applied to them: "These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Do they believe that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were produced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? And in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from their mother's womb?" (Darwin 1959, 483). A discussion of the theory of autochthonous generation was censored from the start of the Darwinian historiography of evolutionary theory. Whereas "evolution-vs-creation" was a useful construct, "evolution-vs-spontaneous mega-generation" was not, because – I repeat – the autochthonists by and large joined the Darwinian camp, and it served no purpose to attack or ridicule the past views of comrades-in-arms by exposing their in retrospect bizarre and fanciful doctrines. Nearly to a man, the autochthonists were appropriated on behalf of the Darwinian cause, together with their scientific possessions and valuables. Thus an army of Darwinian foot soldiers was recruited from the historical past to advance Darwinism. The scientific accomplishments that were theirs now became the legitimate inheritance of the evolutionary Weltanschauung. Darwin undercut the belief in a teleological development of life, yet no such anti-teleology was put in practice when it came to the historical evolution of the evolution theory, Darwinism retrospectively being made to look like the logical-rational outcome of the mainstream of nineteenth-century science. The historiography of Darwinism was an integral part of the process of its institutionalisation, and excising from the historical record the pages on autochthonous generation served the "politics of Darwinian evolution theory." Such partisan appropriation of the past by Darwin scholarship is not unique and similar to what has gone on in, for example, Humboldt scholarship (Rupke 2005). It calls for a metahistorical examination of the purposes – political as well as scientific – of the
Neither Creation nor Evolution massive body of literature on Darwinism, starting with Darwin's own contributions to the history of his life and work (for such an approach to social Darwinism see Moore 1986). This is not the only historiographical desideratum that emerges from the identification of the "third way" in mid-nineteenth thinking about the origin of species. Revisionist work that needs to be done should take account of the "geography of knowledge" approach (Livingstone 2003) and includes the further identification across the Western world of the scientific constituency that favoured autochthonous generation, a full description of what the theory entailed, a comparative study of the institutional and sociopolitical location of the theory in the various countries and locations where it had adherents, a study, too, of its situatedness within pre-Origin paleontology and physiology, an exploration of the reasons why some of the leading autochthonists so readily switched to Darwinism, and of the extent to which in the popular literature autochthonous megageneration persisted. Finally, we may want to examine whether developments in evolutionary biochemistry of recent decades have their intellectual antecedents in mid-nineteenth century autochthony – more so at least than in Darwinism. Helpful in this connection might prove a "What if …?" scenario: what would evolutionary biology be like today if the theory of autochthonous generation and, with that, abiogenesis as the central moment in the study of organic origins, had not been terminated by Darwinism? Would we by now be closer than we are to solving the problem of the origin of life and to producing life in the laboratory? Would the concept of self-organization have gathered strength well before its 1970s and its current "emergence"? If possibly so, the history of the "third way" in midnineteenth century thinking about the origin of species could and should be brought to bear on these scientific trends. References Ballenstedt, J. G. J. (1818) Die Urwelt oder Beweis von dem Daseyn und Untergange von mehr als einer Vorwelt. Basse, Quedlinburg Leipzig. Ballenstedt, J. G. J. (1819) Die fortdauernde Schöpfung; oder: Ist eine fortwährende Erzeugung neuer Organismen möglich? Archiv für die neuesten Entdeckungen aus der Urwelt, Vol. 1(2), pp. 252-276. Ballenstedt, J. G. J. (1824) Die Vorwelt und die Mitwelt, wie auch Nachträge zur alten und neuen Welt. Meyer, Braunschweig. Baron, W. (1961) Zur Stellung von Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1862) in der Geschichte des Evolutionsgedankens. Sudhoffs Archiv, Vol. 45, pp. 97-109. Best, H. (1998) 'Que faire avec un tel peuple?' Carl Vogt et la révolution allemande de 1848-49. In: Pont, J.-C. et al. (eds) Carl Vogt (1817-185). Science, philosophie et politique. Georg, Chêne-Bourg, pp. 13-30. Birabén, M. (1968) Germán Burmeister; su vida, su obra. [Buenos Aires]: Secretaría de Estado de Cultura y Educación, Dirección General de Difusión Cultural. Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) 167
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Preface A new yearbook for history
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