Monism and Morphology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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Date
2012
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Abstract
Ernst Haeckel’s monistic worldview and his interpretation
of Darwin’s theory of evolution worked together to help him rule out
any role for divine providence or any non-material mind, spirit, will, or
purpose in the organic world. In his account of 1866, the impersonal,
unpredictable, and purposeless external environment was what drove
evolutionary change.
By around the turn of the twentieth century, however, new theories
of evolution, heredity, and embryology were challenging Haeckel’s, but
Haeckel no longer responded with his earlier vigor. Younger monistically
oriented evolutionary biologists had to take the lead in modernizing and
defending the monistic interpretation and the external causes of evolution.
Three of these younger biologists are discussed here: Haeckel’s student, the
morphologist-turned-theoretician Richard Semon (1859–1918); Ludwig
Plate (1862–1937), who took over Haeckel’s chair at the University of
Jena and became an influential journal editor and commentator on new
research on heredity and evolution; and Paul Kammerer (1880–1926),
whose experimental evidence for the modifying power of the environment
was hotly debated.
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Monism, Morphology, Evolution, Old-School Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, Paul Kammerer, Ludwig Plate, Richard Semon
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Sander Gliboff, "Monism and Morphology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," in Monism: Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the History of a Worldview, ed. Todd Weir, 135–158, New York: Palgrave USA, 2012.
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Book chapter