Ernst Haeckel Explained

Ernst Haeckel
Birth Name:Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel
Birth Date:16 February 1834
Birth Place:Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia
Death Place:Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Germany
Workplaces:University of Jena
Spouse:Anna Sethe, Agnes Huschke
Alma Mater:
Author Abbrev Zoo:Haeckel
Author Abbrev Bot:Haeckel
Signature:Ernst Haeckel Signature.jpg
Prizes:
    Known For:Recapitulation theory

    Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (pronounced as /de/; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology,[1] phylum,[2] phylogeny,[3] and Protista.[4] Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

    The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures, collected in his Kunstformen der Natur ("Art Forms of Nature"), a book which would go on to influence the Art Nouveau artistic movement. As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträthsel (1895–1899; in English: The Riddle of the Universe, 1900), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching[5] to support teaching evolution.

    Haeckel was also a promoter of scientific racism[6] and embraced the idea of Social Darwinism.[7] He was the first person to characterize the Great War the "first" World War, which he did as early as 1914.

    Early life and education

    Ernst Haeckel was born on 16 February 1834, in Potsdam (then part of the Kingdom of Prussia).[8] In 1852 Haeckel completed studies at the Domgymnasium, the cathedral high-school of Merseburg.[9] He then studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg, particularly with Albert von Kölliker, Franz Leydig, Rudolf Virchow (with whom he later worked briefly as assistant), and with the anatomist-physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858). Together with Hermann Steudner he attended botany lectures in Würzburg. In 1857 Haeckel attained a doctorate in medicine, and afterwards he received the license to practice medicine. The occupation of physician appeared less worthwhile to Haeckel after contact with suffering patients.

    Career

    Haeckel studied under Carl Gegenbaur at the University of Jena for three years. In 1861 he earned a habilitation in comparative anatomy and became a professor of zoology at the University at Jena, where he remained for 47 years, from 1862 to 1909. Between 1859 and 1866 Haeckel worked on many phyla, such as radiolarians, poriferans (sponges) and annelids (segmented worms). During a trip to the Mediterranean, Haeckel named nearly 150 new species of radiolarians.

    From 1866 to 1867 Haeckel made an extended journey to the Canary Islands with Hermann Fol. On 17 October 1866 he arrived in London. Over the next few days he met Charles Lyell, and visited Thomas Huxley and family at their home. On 21 October he visited Charles Darwin at Down House in Kent.[10] In 1867 he married Agnes Huschke. Their son Walter was born in 1868, their daughters Elizabeth in 1871 and Emma in 1873. In 1869 he traveled as a researcher to Norway, in 1871 to Croatia (where he lived on the island of Hvar in a monastery),[11] and in 1873 to Egypt, Turkey, and Greece. In 1907 he had a museum built in Jena to teach the public about evolution. Haeckel retired from teaching in 1909, and in 1910 he withdrew from the Evangelical Church of Prussia.

    On the occasion of his 80th birthday celebration he was presented with a two-volume work entitled Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken (What We Owe to Ernst Haeckel), edited at the request of the German Monistenbund by Heinrich Schmidt of Jena.[12] [13]

    Personal life and death

    In 1864, his first wife, Anna Sethe, died. Haeckel dedicated some species of jellyfish that he found beautiful (such as Desmonema annasethe) to her.[14] [15]

    Haeckel's second wife, Agnes, died in 1915, and he became substantially frailer, breaking his leg and arm. He sold his "Villa Medusa" in Jena in 1918 to the Carl Zeiss foundation, which preserved his library. Haeckel died on 9 August 1919.[16]

    Religious views

    In Monism as Connecting Religion and Science (1892), he argued in favor of monism as the view most compatible with the current scientific understanding of the natural world. His perspective of monism was pantheistic and impersonal.

    The monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognizes the divine spirit in all things. It can never recognise in God a "personal being," or, in other words, an individual of limited extension in space, or even of human form. God is everywhere.[17]
    Haeckel became the most famous proponent of Monism in Germany.[18] In 1906 Haeckel belonged to the founders of the Monist League (Deutscher Monistenbund), which took a stance against philosophical materialism and promote a "natural Weltanschauung".[19] This organization lasted until 1933 and included such notable members as Wilhelm Ostwald, Georg von Arco (1869–1940), Helene Stöcker and Walter Arthur Berendsohn.[20]

    Politics

    Haeckel's affinity for the German Romantic movement, coupled with his acceptance of a form of Lamarckism, influenced his political beliefs. Rather than being a strict Darwinian, Haeckel believed that the characteristics of an organism were acquired through interactions with the environment and that ontogeny reflected phylogeny. He saw the social sciences as instances of "applied biology", and that phrase was picked up and used for Nazi propaganda.[21]

    He was the first person to use the term "first world war" about World War I.[22]

    However, Haeckel's books were banned by the Nazi Party, which refused Monism and Haeckel's freedom of thought. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that Haeckel had often overtly recognized the great contribution of educated Jews to the German culture.[23]

    Research

    Haeckel was a zoologist, an accomplished artist and illustrator, and later a professor of comparative anatomy. Although Haeckel's ideas are important to the history of evolutionary theory, and although he was a competent invertebrate anatomist most famous for his work on radiolaria, many speculative concepts that he championed are now considered incorrect. For example, Haeckel described and named hypothetical ancestral microorganisms that have never been found.[24]

    He was one of the first to consider psychology as a branch of physiology. He also proposed the kingdom Protista in 1866. His chief interests lay in evolution and life development processes in general, including development of nonrandom form, which culminated in the beautifully illustrated Kunstformen der Natur (Art forms of nature). Haeckel did not support natural selection, rather believing in Lamarckism.[25]

    Haeckel advanced a version of the earlier recapitulation theory previously set out by Étienne Serres in the 1820s and supported by followers of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire including Robert Edmond Grant. It proposed a link between ontogeny (development of form) and phylogeny (evolutionary descent), summed up by Haeckel in the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". His concept of recapitulation has been refuted in the form he gave it (now called "strong recapitulation"), in favour of the ideas first advanced by Karl Ernst von Baer. The strong recapitulation hypothesis views ontogeny as repeating forms of adult ancestors, while weak recapitulation means that what is repeated (and built upon) is the ancestral embryonic development process.[26] Haeckel supported the theory with embryo drawings that have since been shown to be oversimplified and in part inaccurate, and the theory is now considered an oversimplification of quite complicated relationships, however comparison of embryos[27] remains a powerful way to demonstrate that all animals are related. Haeckel introduced the concept of heterochrony, the change in timing of embryonic development over the course of evolution.[28] [29]

    Notes and References

    1. Book: Haeckel . Ernst . Generelle Morphologie der Organismen . The General Morphology of Organisms . 1866 . Georg Reimer . Berlin, (Germany) . 2 . de. From p. 286: "Unter Oecologie verstehen wir die gesammte Wissenschaft von den Beziehungen des Organismus zur umgebenden Aussenwelt, wohin wir im weiteren Sinne alle "Existenz-Bedingungen" rechnen können." (By "ecology" we understand the comprehensive science of the relationships of the organism to its surrounding environment, where we can include, in the broader sense, all "conditions of existence".)
    2. Book: Haeckel . Ernst . Generelle Morphologie der Organismen . The General Morphology of Organisms . 1866 . G. Reimer . Berlin, (Germany) . 1 . 28–29 . de. Haeckel noted that species constantly evolved into new species that seemed to retain few consistent features among themselves and therefore few features that distinguished them as a group ("a self-contained unity"). "Wohl aber ist eine solche reale und vollkommen abgeschlossene Einheit die Summe aller Species, welche aus einer und derselben gemeinschaftlichen Stammform allmählig sich entwickelt haben, wie z. B. alle Wirbelthiere. Diese Summe nennen wir Stamm (Phylon)." (However, perhaps such a real and completely self-contained unity is the aggregate of all species which have gradually evolved from one and the same common original form, as, for example, all vertebrates. We name this aggregate [a] Stamm [i.e., race] (Phylon).)
    3. (Haeckel, 1866), vol. 1, p. 29: "Die Untersuchung der Entwicklung dieser Stämme und die Feststellung der genealogischen Verwandtschaft aller Species, die zu einem Stamm gehören, halten wir für die höchste und letzte besondere Aufgabe der organischen Morphologie. Im sechsten Buche werden wir die Grundzüge dieser Phylogenie oder Entwicklungsgeschichte der organischen Stämme (Kreise oder "Typen") festzustellen haben." (The investigation of the evolution of these phyla and the identification of the genealogical kinship of all species that belong to a phylum—we deem [this] the highest and ultimately specific task of organic morphology. In the sixth book, we will have to establish the outline of this "phylogeny" or history of the evolution of the organic phyla (groups or "types").)
    4. (Haeckel, 1866), vol. 1, pp. 215 ff. From p. 215: "VII. Character des Protistenreiches." (VII. Character of the kingdom of Protists.) From p. 216: "VII. B. Morphologischer Character des Protistenreiches. Ba. Character der protistischen Individualitäten. Der wesentliche tectologische Character der Protisten liegt in der sehr unvollkommenen Ausbildung und Differenzirung der Individualität überhaupt, insbesondere aber derjenigen zweiter Ordnung, der Organe. Sehr viele Protisten erheben sich niemals über den morphologischen Werth von Individuen erster Ordnung oder Plastiden." (VII. B. Morphological character of the kingdom of protists. Ba. Character of the protist Individualities. The essential tectological character of protists lies in the very incomplete formation and differentiation of individuality generally, however particularly of those of the second order, the organs. Very many protists never rise above the morphological level of individuals of the first order or plastids.)
    5. Freedom in Science and Teaching. German 1877, English 1879, .
    6. Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 140.
    7. Hawkins, Mike (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 137.
    8. Book: Di Gregorio . Mario A. . 1: Young Haeckel . From Here to Eternity: Ernst Haeckel and Scientific Faith . Religion, Theologie Und Naturwissenschaft/Religion, Theology, And Natural Science . 3 . Goettingen . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht . 2005 . 26 . 9783525569726 . 25 March 2019. On 16 February 1834 a son was born to Charlotte and Carl Gottlob Haeckel in Kanal 24a (later Yorkstrasse 7), Potsdam, Prussia. His name was Ernst Heinrich Phillip August, and he was destined to become one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of his time..
    9. "Ernst Haeckel" (article),German Wikipedia, 26 October 2006, webpage: DE-Wiki-Ernst-Haeckel: last paragraph of "Leben" (Life) section.
    10. Book: Richards, Robert J.. The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. 2008. University of Chicago Press. 978-0-226-71219-2. 173–174.
    11. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/02/22/100083143.pdf New York Times
    12. Encyclopedia: Felden . Emil .

      de:Emil Felden

      . Schmidt . Heinrich . Heinrich Schmidt (philosopher) . Deutscher Monistenbund . Was wir Ernst Haeckel Verdanken (What We Owe to Ernst Haeckel): Ein Buch der Verehrung und Dankbarkeit. Felden Pastor an St. Martini Bremen . Pastor of St. Martini Church, Bremen, Germany . de . 1914. Verlag Unesma . 2 . Leipzig . 125–128 . testimony of Emil Felden in Was wir Ernst Haeckel Verdanken, vol. ii, p. 125..
    13. Book: Carus, Paul. The Open Court. 1914. Open Court Publishing Company. 385. PROFESSOR Ernst Haeckel's celebration of his 80th birthday, ...on this occasion we note a work of two stately volumes, entitled Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken, edited at the request of the German Monistenbund by Heinrich Schmidt of Jena. (Image of p. 385 at Google Books).
    14. Book: Haeckel, Ernst. The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel. 14, 50.
    15. Innes . Shelley . From Here to Eternity: Ernst Haeckel and Scientific Faith, Religion, Theology, and Natural Science, Vol. 3 by Mario di Gregorio . Journal of the History of Biology . 2006 . 39 . 1 . 214–216 . 10.1007/s10739-006-0001-9 . 4332000. 189843968 .
    16. Kutschera. Ulrich. Levit. Georgy S.. Hossfeld. Uwe. 1 May 2019. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919): The German Darwin and his impact on modern biology. Theory in Biosciences. en. 138. 1. 1–7. 10.1007/s12064-019-00276-4. 30799517. 1611-7530. free.
    17. Book: Haeckel . Ernst . Monism as Connecting Religion and Science . 1892 . 16 January 2023.
    18. Weir, Todd H. Secularism and religion in nineteenth-century Germany. The rise of the fourth confession. Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 67
    19. Book: Daum . Andreas W. . Andreas Daum . Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914 . 1998 . Oldenbourg . Munich . 3-486-56337-8 . 215–219.
    20. Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism by Paul Weindling, Cambridge University Press, 1993., pp. 46, 250
    21. "Ernst Haeckel" (biography), UC Berkeley, 2004, webpage: BerkeleyEdu-Haeckel.
    22. Book: The Yale Book of Quotations . . . 2006 . 329 . 978-0-300-10798-2 . There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared "European War"...will become the first world war in the full sense of the word. Indianapolis Star, 20 September 1914.
    23. Book: Haeckel, Ernst. The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel. 41.
    24. Book: Jenner, Ronald A.. Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology Linear Thinking about Branching Trees. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2022. 110. 978-1-31622-666-7.
    25. Ruse, M. 1979. The Darwinian Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    26. Richardson and Keuck, (Biol. Review (2002), 77, pp. 495–528) show that it is a simplification to suppose that Haeckel held the recapitulation theory in its strong form. They quote Haeckel as saying "If [recapitulation] was always complete, it would be a very easy task to construct whole phylogeny on the basis of ontogeny. … There is certainly, even now, a number of lower vertebrate animals (e.g. some Anthozoa and Vermes) where we are authorised to interpret each embryological form directly as the historical representation or portrait-like silhouette of an extinct ancestral form. But in a great majority of animals, including man, this is not possible because the infinitely varied conditions of existence have led the embryonic forms themselves to be changed and to partly lose their original condition (Haeckel, 1903: pp. 435–436)"
    27. Watts E . Levit GS . Hossfeld U . Ernst Haeckel's contribution to Evo-Devo and scientific debate: a re-evaluation of Haeckel's controversial illustrations in US textbooks in response to creationist accusations. . Theory Biosci . 2019 . 138 . 1 . 9–29 . 30868433 . 10.1007/s12064-019-00277-3 . 76663562 . free .
    28. Book: Horder, Tim . Heterochrony . Encyclopedia of Life Sciences . John Wiley & Sons . April 2006 .
    29. Hall . B. K. . Evo-Devo: evolutionary developmental mechanisms . International Journal of Developmental Biology . 2003 . 47 . 7–8 . 491–495 . 14756324.