wrote:

> I was startled to see Michael Ragland say of Haeckel:
> In article ,
> Michael Ragland  wrote:
> >I will use this opportunity, however, to comment on Haeckel. As you
> >probably know he is famous for the saying ontogeny recapitulates
> >phylogeny which is incorrect in any pure sense. But then seeing Haeckel
> >didn't subscribe to natural selection and wasn't a real evolutionist
> >(despite what the article says below) but rather a Lamarckian type it
> >was rather easy for him to declare ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
> >Haeckel's mechanism of change required that formation of new characters
> >diagnostic of new species occured through progressive addition to the
> >developmental trajectory. This is not natural selection.
> ...
> Hacekel was certainly an evolutionist but less so a Darwinian. 
> 
> So I went to the on-line book "The Evolution Of Man" that Robert Karl
> Stonjek kindly posted links to.  There we find Haeckel praising Darwin and
> (while giving some credit to Lamarck), saying things like this:
> 
> "To adaptation we must add heredity as the second and not less important
> agency, as Lamarck perfectly recognised. He said that the modification of the
> organs in any one individual by use or disuse was slight, but that it was
> increased by accumulation in passing by heredity from generation to 
> generation. But he missed altogether the principle which Darwin afterwards
> found to be the chief factor in the theory of transformation -- namely, the
> principle of natural selection in the struggle for existence. It was partly
> owing to his failure to detect this supremely important element, and partly to
> the poor condition of all biological science at the time, that Lamarck did not
> succeed in establishing more firmly his theory of the common descent of man
> and the other animals."
> 
> If Haeckel constrained how and where selection could be effective, harnessing
> it tightly to his Biogenetic Law, I still think this makes him a Darwinian,
> even though we might not identify with many of his views on how and where
> natural selection acted.
> 
> Of course anyone is free to declare that some historical figure
"isn't really"
> a Darwinian and define that any way they want, but in my book Haeckel is a
> Darwinian.

It's going to depend on what the essential elements of "Darwinian
theory" are. In context, Haeckel was a curious mix of the older scala
naturae, Goethean romanticism, and Darwinian theory. Sure, he accepted
and promoted natural selection, but I get the impression he did so
without much real appreciaion for it as a populational effect. And he
continued to "say higher and lower"... as witness the mighty oaks of
phylogenetic trees he published. [OTOH, his Kunstformen are exquisite
and justify almost anything, including his rabid nationalism.]

Hull has argued (and Gould disputed) that historical movements are
individuals that can be ostensively defined (point at and named, in
effect) but not intensionally defined (described as having necessary and
sufficient properties), and that while Darwin's ideas are of course the
proximate source of many of the ideas that travelled under the banner
thereafter, from the very beginning some core "Darwinian" ideas, such as
the efficacy of selection, sexual selection, speciation by selection,
and so forth have been what philosophers and sociologists of science
sometimes call "contested". So "being a Darwinian" did
not tie one to
accepting a creed.

I think Haeckel is an atavism; at best his contributions were in the
arena of phylogeny (and that is corrupted by his misuse of illustrations
of embryos and his "biogenetic law"), and he does not show that he fully
comprehends the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution, unlike, say, Moritz
Wagner, who manages to revise Darwin's ideas in a Darwinian fashion.

My 2c.
-- 
John Wilkins
B'dies, Brutius
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 2/11/03 12:25:56 PM