Biography
Ernst Haeckel was born on February 16, 1834 in the province of Potsdam, which at that time was part of Prussia. Studied in Merseburg. In 1852, Haeckel graduated from school, then received medical education in Berlin and Würzburg. He then entered the University of Jena. Here he specialized in zoology, in this specialty under the guidance of Karl Gegenbaur he subsequently defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1857, E. Haeckel got the opportunity to engage in his own medical practice. But he stopped liking this profession immediately after meeting the patients. In 1862, Ernest Haeckel returned to the university, where he began teaching comparative anatomy. There he worked for the next 47 years (until 1909). In 1866, Haeckel traveled to the Canary Islands with Hermann Faul. Here he met T. Huxley, C. Darwin and C. Lyell. In 1867, Haeckel married Agnes Huschke. They had three children. Ernst Haeckel died on August 9, 1919 in Germany.
While still a student, Haeckel was interested in embryology. From 1859 to 1866 he studied the embryonic development of polychaetes, sponges and rays. During an expedition through the Mediterranean region, he discovered more than 150 species of rayfish new to science. In 1859-1887 described thousands of new species. Such a contribution to systematics was possible because in the last third of the 19th century the fauna of marine invertebrates was almost unexplored; work in this regard was just beginning.
Note 1
In 1860, Haeckel became acquainted with Darwin's On the Origin of Species and was immediately captivated by the evolutionary idea. Six years later, he published the most famous scientific work of his life, “The General Morphology of Organisms.” In this book, devoted not so much to morphology as to the problems of general biology and evolution, Haeckel first used the term “ecology”.
Ecological studies of E. Haeckel
Subsequently, he returned many times to environmental topics, referring primarily to the relationship of animals and plants with each other and with the environment, as well as the behavior of animals, to the scope of this science. In fact, E. Haeckel in his works not only gave the name to the new science, but also substantiated some of its main divisions, which themselves became the object of scientific interests of researchers much later.
Haeckel pointed out that the set environmental factors, significant for everyone a separate type, extremely specific and diverse, as a rule, has not yet been studied. Although this was said more than a century and a half ago, nothing fundamentally has changed with regard to most species of flora and fauna. This is not a consequence of our lack of knowledge or methodology, but of the extreme complexity of the subject. At the time of Haeckel, ecology was largely reduced to autecology, as easier to understand and study using instrumental methods. Therefore, environmental conditions were usually understood as predominantly inorganic - the influence of light, heat, humidity, mineral composition of the environment, etc. At the same time, back in 1866, Haeckel pointed out that organic factors, that is, the interaction of all organisms with each other, are much more important both for the life of organisms in current moment, and for their evolution.
Note 2
The concept of “ecology” did not immediately take root in science, which was due to the difficulty of perceiving the text of “General Morphology”. The popular presentation of ecological ideas in The Natural History of Peacemaking (1868) was perceived scientific world much easier.
German naturalist who contributed to the development and propaganda of natural historical materialism. Follower of Charles Darwin. He received his education at the Universities of Berlin and Würzburg. In 1857 he defended his doctoral dissertation “On the tissues of crayfish.” From 1861 - privat-docent, and in 1862-1909. - Professor at the University of Jena. E. Haeckel is the author of a number of original studies on the zoology of invertebrates, phylogeny of plants, animals and other issues of biology. These studies and in particular the monographs “On Radiolarians” (1862), “On Calcareous Sponges” (1872), “On Jellyfish” (1880), “Systematic Phylogeny” (1894-96) characterize E. Haeckel as one of the greatest biologists 19 V. However, his books and articles devoted to the generalization and popularization of the achievements of natural science, especially evolutionary theory. The most famous of these works are: “General Morphology of Organisms” (1866), “Natural History of the Universe” (1868), “Anthropogeny, or the History of Human Development” (1874) and especially “World Mysteries” (1899) and “Miracles of Life” (1904). Haeckel is the author of the term “ecology”.
Based on the theory of Charles Darwin, E. Haeckel developed the doctrine of the laws of origin and historical development of living nature. He saw the significance of this teaching in the fact that it allows one to systematically trace the historical connection of related group organic forms and depict it in the form of a “family tree.” E. Haeckel formulated the gastrea theory, according to which all multicellular animals descended from one common ancestor- a hypothetical primitive creature, which is a double sac floating by means of cilia, which he called “gastrea”. In fact, the data underlying this theory belongs to the Russian scientist A. O. Kovalevsky, whose work Haeckel carefully studied. However, Kovalevsky, as noted by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, always treated E. Haeckel’s theory of gastrea with restraint. The key to understanding phylogenesis, according to Haeckel, is the study individual development living organisms – ontogenesis. In this regard, Haeckel formulated and justified in the form biogenetic law Darwin's idea of the connection between phylogenesis and ontogenesis. E. Haeckel came up with the idea of the existence in the historical past of an intermediate form between monkey and man - Pithecanthropus, an idea that was brilliantly confirmed later (in the 90s of the 19th century) by the discovery of remains of such a form on the island of Java. The great merit of E. Haeckel is also the fact that he replenished taxonomy, morphology and other branches of biology with many new factual data. E. Haeckel, trying to reconcile Darwinism with Lamarckism, believed that variability biological species is the result of the interaction between adaptation and heredity. E. Haeckel emphasized the determining role of the external environment in the life and development of living organisms, in particular in the origin of hereditary changes. He recognized the possibility of inheritance of characters acquired by organisms during their individual life. Defending and developing Darwinism, Haeckel sharply criticized R. Virchow when he opposed the teaching of evolutionary theory in educational institutions.
E. Haeckel is one of the most progressive scientists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a representative of natural historical materialism. However, in a number of cases he moved away from materialism. In some of his statements he approached Kantianism, for example, speaking about the unknowability of substance. E. Haeckel himself called his worldview “monism,” renounced the name “materialist,” and defended the union of science and religion.
E. Haeckel was one of the founders and ideologists of “social Darwinism”. Unlawfully extending the laws of living nature to the phenomena of social life, he explains, for example, the division of society into classes by the action of natural selection, class struggle- the action of the law of the struggle for existence, etc. Speaking in defense of the teaching of Darwinism, E. Haeckel tried to “rehabilitate” it in the eyes of the state, proving that Darwinism is essentially an allegedly anti-socialist teaching. E. Haeckel compared society with an organism and believed that improvement social order perhaps based on expanding knowledge in the field of biology and anthropology. Approving European colonial policy with the help of racist arguments, E. Haeckel said that the so-called. savages (Australians, Vedas, Akkas, etc.) are intellectually closer to monkeys and other higher mammals than to cultivated Europeans. These views were consistent with his positive attitude towards Bismarck’s policies, and at the end of his life – with chauvinistic sentiments during the First World War.
References
- Biographical dictionary of figures in natural science and technology. T. 1. – Moscow: State. scientific publishing house "Bolshaya" Soviet encyclopedia", 1958. – 548 p.
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Translation: I. Chistyakova (Christian Scientific Apologetic Center)
Translated with permission from creation.com
Ernst Haeckel
Embryology was once called Entwicklungsgeschichte- “the evolutionary history of organisms,” believing that each organism repeats this history in its development. Ernst Haeckel's typology absorbed Goethe's ideas, Cuvier's classification structures, Lamarckian “mechanisms” of inheritance of acquired characteristics - and placed all this in the system of Darwinian phylogenesis.
The forgery of drawings depicting the development of an embryo is not the only Haeckelian falsification. Haeckel constructed the first universal phylogenetic tree and described the first ape-man before any actual evidence was found. He accompanied his article “Moneron” with artistic sketches of the spontaneous origin of life from inorganic matter, which then, during the period of the spread of evolutionary teaching (until the 1920s), wandered from textbook to textbook.
Thanks to Haeckel's legacy, myths about the absence of pain in newborns, laws in favor of abortion, psychoanalysis and even the sexual revolution received logical “justification”. Haeckel provided materialism with a whole arsenal of slogans and new terms. He founded the League of Monists, which publicly proclaimed evolutionism as the highest deity of science and inspired ordinary people that science denies “dualism” - the idea of the coexistence of spirit and matter. This idea turned out to be equally attractive to socialists and “proto-fascists”: this is evidenced by the numerous letters that came to Haeckel, the Darwinist demagogue, from all over the world. Recently discovered letters sent to him from Scandinavia show that Haeckel's views prevailed in Darwinism not only in Germany but also in the Nordic countries.
Ernst Haeckel - Darwin's heir
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834-1919) was professor of zoology at the University of Jena from 1862 to 1909. In this post, he replaced the outstanding morphologist Karl Gegenbaur, who resigned in 1862 (and later moved to Heidelberg). Haeckel received a position at the university even before the spread of the doctrine of evolution. He studied invertebrates - in particular, radiolarians (amoeba-like protozoans with a bizarre mineral skeleton), sponges and annelids. In his scientific work he described more than 3,500 species of radiolarians.
Like Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Haeckel married his first cousin (the deeply religious Emma Darwin was against publishing her husband's research). Anna Haeckel (nee Sethe) died on her husband's thirtieth birthday, and her death awakened in him an aversion to the spiritual. Hegel’s “General Morphology” is an explosion of feelings of a bitter man who, out of grief, could not even attend the funeral of his beloved wife. In a letter to Darwin, Haeckel wrote: after Anna’s untimely death, he did not care what they thought of him.
Darwin avoided discussing how his theory related to Christianity; Haeckel even opposed the idea of dualism, which presupposes the coexistence of matter and spirit, ansich(as such) - and therefore called his views “monism”.
It was Haeckel, and not Darwin, who “stamped” ill-conceived terms one after another. Actually, thanks to the newly introduced terminology, Haeckel managed to succeed. “Ecology”, “phylum”, “phylogeny”, “ontogenesis”, “protists”, “palingenesis”, “coenogenesis”, “gastrula”, “blastula” and “morula” are still popular in the scientific community. Haeckel's terms took root even despite the fact that the most important evidence and drawings were forged.
Olaf Breidbach, director of the Haeckel House Museum in Jena, points out the fundamental classification differences between Haeckel's typology and Darwin's phylogeny. The term "morphology" was introduced by the German thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Haeckel combined Goethe's ahistorical views with Darwin's radical theories. To “reveal the true structure of nature,” Haeckel added to Darwin’s theory of gradual evolutionary development the idea of preformed “ontogenesis” (individual development of the organism). To do this, he borrowed the classification system of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and reworked it in accordance with Darwin's concept of phylogeny.
Haeckel was 25 years younger than Darwin. He gained fame and position in no small part due to his biased approach to the study of embryonic development and, in particular, due to the recognition of the founder of evolutionary theory himself. In later editions of the Origin of Species (chapter XIV) it is said:
“Professor Haeckel... has devoted his vast knowledge and talent to the study of what he calls phylogeny, or the lines of relationship connecting all organic beings. When constructing such [genealogical] series, he relies primarily on embryological characteristics...”
As a result of Haeckel's popularization activities, his ideas had a greater influence on science than Darwin's. The main work of the tireless Jena professor, “General Morphology,” was an attempt to systematize all of biology in accordance with Darwin’s theory. Haeckel's "phylogenetic trees" included all forms of life. Haeckel wrote this book in just a year in places where he was once happy with his wife. If Darwin wrote only three hours a day, Haeckel, broken by loss, on the contrary, completely lost sleep. According to contemporaries, he could sleep three to four hours a day. Darwin, whose academic titles were limited, as far as is known, to a master's degree humanities and whose obtained “specimens” were for the most part safely eaten by the researcher himself, he admired Haeckel’s energy and scientific approach. He never ceased to praise the young professor:
“When trying to trace the genealogy of mammals, and therefore of man, descending lower and lower through the steps of the animal kingdom, we plunge into darker and darker areas of science... Anyone who wants to know what intelligence and knowledge can give should turn to the works of Prof. Haeckel."
Often, following Darwin, the idea of recapitulation is mistakenly attributed to Karl von Baer (1792-1876) or equated with a simple similarity of embryos. But Darwin mentioned in in this context the Estonian German von Baer, who was already at an advanced age at that time, by mistake. A year before von Baer's death, Darwin apparently did not have his work.
Figure 1. Vulgar evolutionary racism as presented by Ernst Haeckel in the famous book “The Evolution of Man” (German edition of 1874), where the infamous drawings of embryos were published.
In 1859, Darwin published his work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Conservation favorable races in the struggle for life." There was only one illustration in the book. But in the introduction to Darwin’s next work, dedicated to human evolution, there was already a whole cavalcade of drawings: Haeckel’s ill-fated embryos. Until the publication of The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin did not undertake to extrapolate his theory to humans. But by that time the works of the ambitious Haeckel had already begun to appear. And paying tribute to his colleague, the elderly Darwin wrote in the introduction to his new book: “Nevertheless, the idea that man, along with other species, represents the descendant of some ancient ... type, is not at all new ... is now supported by many famous naturalists and philosophers , like... and especially Haeckel... The latter, in addition to his excellent work “Generalelle Morphologie” (1866), recently published, in 1868, and in the second edition in 1870, his “Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte”, in which he comprehensively analyzed pedigree of a person. If this book had appeared before my essay was written, I, in all likelihood, would not have finished it. Almost all the conclusions to which I have come are confirmed by Haeckel, and his knowledge is in many respects much more complete than mine.”
Demagogue-dogmatist on a European scale
By 1914, Haeckel had been accepted as a member of nearly a hundred professional and scientific societies. According to contemporaries, after Haeckel retired, his theories essentially turned into self-centered dogmatism. For example, in 1911, during lengthy discussions, and later in correspondence with the founder of Finnish genetics, Harry Federley, Haeckel persistently denied Mendel's laws.
Haeckel's classic work "World Riddles" ( Die Weltratsel, 1899) became one of the most popular books in the history of science. In Germany, the first edition had a circulation of more than one hundred thousand and was sold out within a year. By 1919, the book had already been reprinted ten times and translated into 30 languages. By 1933, almost half a million copies were sold in Germany.
This book inspired rebellion on both the “right” and the “left.” Truly, it is difficult to find a point of contact in the twentieth century that would unite political extremists of all stripes and persuasions better than the ideology of evolutionism. The late Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) argued that Haeckel's books
“Without a doubt, to a greater extent than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin and Huxley (as the latter openly admitted), they managed to convince the whole world of the validity of the theory of evolution.”
Haeckel's theory of recapitulation has influenced both the hard sciences (for example, paleontology) and the humanities (for example, forensic anthropology and psychoanalysis). Paradoxically, its influence can be traced even in the sexual revolution, the scout movement and the behaviorist hypothesis " tabula rasa" Wilhelm Ostwald mentions the interscientific lobby of monists in his “Monist Sermons”. Haeckel's drawings, in which he depicted a naked woman surrounded by lustful ape-like males, can rightly be considered the forerunners of Sigmund Freud's “recapitulating pansexualism.”
Although Haeckel's academic achievements in Jena were long gone, he continued to remain on the European continent iconic figure. He entered into polemics with church authorities and promoted nationalism. The militant professor was convinced that the laws of nature (as he understood them) should become the laws of society, and proposed to save nations from biological degeneration, calling for help anticlericalism, rationalism, materialism, racism (Figure 1), patriotism, eugenics and the idea of the superiority of the Aryan race .
Haeckel first used the vague expression “labyrinth of ontogenesis” in “World Riddles.” This book needed neither illustrations nor detailed explanations. All twenty chapters consisted of discussions about the “embryology of the soul” and “phylogenesis of the soul.” Images of a human embryo with gill slits, tail, fins and furrows, illustrating the idea of the external similarity of vertebrate embryos, remain one of the most common illustrations in biology textbooks, although they are fakes.
In 1906, Haeckel organized the Monist League in Jena ( Monistebund). By 1911, it numbered almost 6,000 people, among whom were theologians of the most radical persuasion. Meetings of groups belonging to the League were held in 42 cities in Germany and Austria.
The underappreciated complexity of the cell
Decades have passed since Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), as a result of experiments with sterile media carried out by him in 1859-1862, seemed to finally say goodbye to the idea of the spontaneous generation of life. But Haeckel continued to believe in the supernatural evolutionary capabilities of proteins. In his opinion, shapeless deposits of gypsum on seabed were evidence of the existence of the simplest forms of life. In popularizing this idea, not only Mendel's discovery of "latent factors" ("Anlagen"), but also Pasteur's observations were ignored.
Haeckel imagined and drew a group of precellular protoplasmic organisms, which he called "monera" (Figure 2). He believed that
“there should be absolutely no organs in their structure, they should consist entirely of formless, primitive homogeneous matter... just some kind of shapeless, mobile clot of mucus or silt, which is a protein compound of carbon.”
Figure 2. The reproduction cycle of Monera - a supposed intermediate link between inanimate matter and living organisms. The figure shows the “details” of the spontaneous generation of a living organism. This is one of the most obvious falsifications among the illustrations given in Haeckel's works. (From the Swedish edition of The History of Peacemaking, p. 127).
Until the last reprint in the 1920s, Haeckel's History of Peacemaking was published unchanged. Detailed description the fictional “particles of life” apparently represented a deliberate deception, since Haeckel was an outstanding expert on marine organisms and even published art albums with their real images. In its original form, the article about “moners” consisted of 70 pages of text and included 30 drawings.
Thomas Henry Huxley (Huxley) (1825-1895) - grandfather of Julian Huxley and Aldous Huxley - allegedly confirmed the existence of Haeckel's "moneron" in 1868 and named it Bathybius haeckelii. However, he later disproved this discovery (when it turned out that he had observed a siliceous mass). By the way, he owns the aphorism: “Science is an organization of common sense, where many beautiful theories have been destroyed by ugly facts.”
The correspondence between Huxley and Haeckel shows that the British Isles and continental Europe were markedly different in spirit. Perhaps this is partly why England showed ideological resistance German Nazis with their “racial hygiene”. The English edition of General Morphology did not include either Haeckel's main arguments about the origin of man or his “system of monism.” Huxley, being an ardent champion of Darwinism, nevertheless cut out entire chapters from Haeckel's main work. Huxley himself was agnostic- by the way, it was he who coined the term “agnosticism.”
To designate hypothetical particles of heredity, Haeckel introduced the concept of “plastidules”. These “memory molecules” were considered to be the precursors of genes. In the West, quasi-scientific theories of chemical evolution tended to favor the idea of DNA/RNA primacy; V socialist countries the more popular dogma was the primacy of protein. In general, Haeckel’s “solid foundation” of nihilistic materialism suited the Soviet system perfectly. Lenin (1870-1924) admired Haeckel and his views. Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976), the inventor of harmful agricultural techniques that became one of the causes of famine in the Soviet Union, also acted under the influence of Haeckel’s ideas. Lysenko was a favorite of Stalin (1878-1953) and, of course, was completely subordinate to the leader. In a eulogy published in 1953 in the newspaper Pravda, Lysenko notes that “Comrade Stalin devoted time to carefully studying the most important problems biology”, “directly edited the draft report “On the situation in biological science”, explained to me in detail his corrections, gave instructions on how to present separate places report."
Haeckel also rejected the theory of entropy (counter-evolution). He believed that life differs from inorganic matter only in the degree of organization. Memory is only a general function of any organized mother. After opening liquid crystals, in particular albumin, all matter began to be considered alive; even electrons were seen as primitive life. The “specific physical and chemical properties of coal” were considered to be the mechanical causes of the “specific motor phenomenon” called life. It was believed that life continues to spontaneously arise wherever suitable conditions arise.
In 1878, Haeckel formulated the concept of "cellular souls" and "soul cells", and with this laid the foundation for the idea of "unity" based on "plastidules", invisible homogeneous elementary molecules of protoplasm. His last published work ( DieKristallsehen, 1917) was dedicated to the development of “descriptive crystallography” and “physiology” of “psychosomatic” crystals. According to Haeckel, the “souls of atoms” interact with each other through attraction, repulsion and crystallization. He endowed cells with a soul, and considered matter to consist of cells.
It must be remembered that at the beginning of the twentieth century, life was not defined from the perspective of information theory, as is customary today after the revolutionary discoveries of DNA. Back in the 1960s, cells were thought of as little more than reagent vessels containing complex chemical mixtures maintained at constant temperature and pressure. Information about metabolism was just emerging, and scientists still believed that cellular processes could be described as a complex series of random collisions resulting from the diffusion of substances in a limited space.
Fraud as a system
Haeckel was not a consistent materialist, since he considered certain mystical forces to be the driving force of evolution inside matter itself. Rejecting the teachings of Gregor Mendel (1823-1884), based on countless experiments, was a terrible mistake. New signs did not appear in peas “out of nowhere.” Haeckel completely came over to the side of anti-Mendelian “science”, which believed that the environment has a direct effect on organisms and as a result of this new races arise.
Figure 3. The first comprehensive family/phylogenetic tree compiled by Ernst Haeckel. Note the fictitious "monera" at the base of the tree. Haeckel transferred the same drawings from book to book. (Illustration from the 5th edition of Human Evolution).
In his recent book, Richard Weikart specifically notes that at the monist congress, Haeckel opposed the spiritual principle and stubbornly defended determinism, denying human free will. Nature and man are one, therefore, for survival it is necessary to adapt to the “ecological” community. It seems that Haeckel’s concept of “ecology” initially had a proto-fascist meaning.
Haeckel made his considerable contribution to various areas natural sciences. Even before any remains of the first supposed human ancestor were discovered, he had already given this ancestor a name: Pithecanthropus alalus(non-speaking ape-man). Later, it was Haeckel's colleague, the anthropologist Eugene Dubois (1858-1940), who discovered "Javan Man". The Haeckelian roots of this find are hidden by the renaming: now “Javanese man” is called Homo erectus, but it was originally named Pithecanthropus erectus.
In his first phylogenetic tree, Haeckel included the entire animal kingdom (Figure 3). He presented it in the form of a series - from simple to complex, and filled the empty spaces with imaginary creatures. The various embryonic phases were given names corresponding to the links in this evolutionary chain. Significant features in images of embryos already known to us were called “heterochrony” ( evolutionary changes relative timing of appearance and rate of development of traits). When Haeckel was faced with the problem of whether to classify lower organisms in the animal or plant kingdom, he invented another new concept - “protists”.
Even half a century after the publication of On the Origin of Species, biologists continued to vigorously debate the principle of natural selection. Darwin was revered for his idea common origin, although, in essence, he simply made the first attempt at a causal explanation of stable sexual selection.
Even if we ignore the fact that Darwin carefully edited his autobiography and letters before 1860, detracting from the pioneering merits of Alfred Wallace (1823-1913), it is clear that Darwin followed the tradition of Malthus, who made the case for the preservation of " class society" In the years industrial revolution, which occurred during the scientist’s childhood, in London even girls under 12 years old were often forced to work more than 100 hours a week. Darwin himself belonged to high society. Ironically, it was Charles' cousin, Francis Galton (1822-1911), who coined the term "eugenics" (racial hygiene), and referred to his noble family as "hereditary genius" - after the title of his own work, published in 1869.
However, Charles Darwin, who spent his life on social visits or hunting in the forest, never tried to transfer his evolutionary ideas, “observed” in nature, to the hierarchy English society. Haeckel, on the contrary, persistently convinced ordinary people, outstanding representatives of German science and countless officials of all ranks - until, in the end, his “wonderful” biogenetic law was recognized as an inexhaustible reservoir of evolutionary information.
From infanticide to genocide
The methodological vagueness of Haeckel's reasoning created the ground for a more hostile attitude towards “inferior” races and people than Darwin's teachings. However, Darwin also substantiated the characteristic high society Malthusian indifference and lack of compassion:
“In the struggle for existence, the more civilized peoples of the so-called Caucasian defeated the Turks. If we look at the world in the near future, we will see what an immense number of lower races will be destroyed throughout the world by more highly developed races!
Haeckel emphasized the physical similarities between people and animals, and considered human thought to be just a physiological process. His comparative embryology transformed man from a special creature into one of the countless representatives of the animal kingdom.
In 1904, in addition to his bestseller “World Riddles,” Haeckel published the book “Bizarre Forms of Nature.” It declared that newborns are born deaf and without consciousness - from which the author further concluded that at birth a person has neither soul nor spirit. Haeckel advocated the killing of newborns with pathology or disfigurement. He called it an “act of mercy” - like the killing of any terminally ill or disabled person:
“Modern society artificially supports the lives of hundreds of thousands of incurable people - crazy people, lepers, cancer patients, and so on. Their suffering is carefully prolonged, bringing no benefit either to them or to society as a whole... With a total European population of three hundred and ninety million people, at least two million are mentally ill people, of whom more than two hundred thousand are incurable. How much suffering for the sick themselves, how much hardship and grief for their loved ones, how much personal and public expenses! How much suffering and waste could be eliminated if people finally decided to free the terminally ill from indescribable torture with just one dose of morphine!”
In his controversial but pioneering study (1971), Daniel Gasman reminds us of Hegel's words about the basis of his conclusions:
“The Spartans conducted a thorough examination and selection of all newborns. Those who were weak, sick, or suffering from any physical infirmity were killed. Only completely healthy and strong children were allowed to live, and only they subsequently continued the family line.”
Haeckel was ahead of Hitler in promoting the Spartan worldview of "nature before care" - and therefore bears direct responsibility for Nazi atrocities.
From infanticide, “corporeal” science and “corporal” law moved on to justifying the legality of the extermination of entire peoples:
"... the morphological differences between two generally recognized species - for example, sheep and goats - are much less significant than ... between the Hottentot and the man of the Teutonic race."
Haeckel divided people into two categories - “curly-haired” and “straight-haired”. The first, in his opinion, were “incapable of real internal culture and higher intellectual development" And “the symmetry of all parts of the body and that harmonious development, which we consider integral to perfect human beauty", according to Haeckel, could only be found among the Aryans.
“The mental activity of savages has not risen much higher than highly developed mammals, especially primates, with whom they are united by genealogical kinship. All their interests come down to the physiological needs of nutrition and reproduction, or the satisfaction of hunger or thirst in the crudest animal form... one can speak of their intelligence no more (or no less) than the intelligence of the most intelligent animals.”
“...such lower races as the Vedas or Australian blacks are psychologically closer to mammals - primates and dogs - than to civilized Europeans. We must therefore assign a completely different value to their lives... their only interests are food and reproduction... many highly developed animals, especially monogamous mammals and birds, have risen to a higher stage of development than the lower savages.”
Already more than half a century ago, anthropologists rejected Haeckel's racist drawings of the brains, skulls, faces (Figure 4), ears and hands of representatives human races and primates. “Embryology” began to be called “developmental biology”, trying to get rid of not only the scandalous episode in the history of this science, but also its original name Entwicklungsgeschichte(evolutionary history of organisms).
With the recent advent of methods for growing embryonic cells, it has become obvious that the idea of embryological recapitulation is still alive (despite the emerging legislation on stem cells, which affects the use of fertilized embryos for scientific purposes and regulates the activities of transnational corporations). An example is the widely circulated university textbook by Gerhart and Kirschner, which talks about “developmental capacity” and the need to transform the “unipolar Haeckelian model” into “bipolar Haeckelian”, “two-dimensional Haeckelian” and “three-dimensional Haeckelian” models. Obviously, no one was going to reject the idea of recapitulation. It has taken root as a scientific myth.
Proto-fascism
Fascism is heterogeneous political movement associated with events such as the First World War, Treaty of Versailles and the October Revolution. He was also influenced by the pervasive Haeckelian legacy.
Daniel Gasman has been criticized for misinterpreting Haeckel's ideas in his above-mentioned work: in particular, he failed to find direct references to the writings of Ernst Haeckel in the documents of the Nazi aristocracy. Nevertheless, Gasman shows that “Huckelism” influenced a huge range of widely separated movements - from National Socialism to Marxism, from psychoanalysis to theosophy and the free thought movement. Even German liberal theology and the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner are built on the shaky scientific foundation of Haeckelian evolutionism.
Richard Weikart's book From Darwin to Hitler (2004) complements Gasman's research. It tells how the Nazis sought to suppress objectionable passages in Haeckel's works - in particular, the fact that Haeckel spoke out in favor of homosexuality, pacifism and feminism. In his analytical work, Gasmen does not criticize Darwinism, because he does not consider Haeckel a real Darwinist. According to Gesmen, Nazi ideology could only have something in common with Darwinism by pure chance, but in relation to “Haeckelism” it is its natural consequence. (Indeed, Haeckel wrote a lot about natural selection, although he also adhered to Lamarckism; at the same time, Darwin considered him his like-minded person.) Weikart also writes about other people who influenced Nazi ideology- such as Friedrich Ratzel, Ludwig Woltmann, Theodor Fritsch, Alfred Ploetz, Dietrich Eckart.
Haeckel skillfully sensed the situation. In "World Mysteries" one can find a complete set of arguments put forward against traditional values. Haeckel's drawings became a source of inspiration for symbolist poets, modern art and the aesthetics of avant-garde modernism. “Haeckelianism” has a complex relationship with fascism, modernism and positivism.
Approval of “Haeckelism” in the Scandinavian countries
In Scandinavia, Darwinism, at least in its popular form, was essentially “Haeckelism.” Haeckel's vulgar extrapolations - both verbal and visual - were easy to understand. In 1907, even before the first editions of the classic books of Haeckel and Darwin appeared in Finnish, one of his contemporaries wrote:
“But his [Darwin’s] supporters turned out to be even more zealous, especially the aforementioned Huxley from England and Ernst Haeckel from Germany. The latter especially contributed to the rapid spread of “Darwinism” on the European continent... Without a doubt, It is to Haeckel that our general public owes its acquaintance with “Darwinism”" [emphasis added].
The influence Haeckel's views and ideas had on his contemporaries can be judged by the following fact: the Haeckel House Museum recently published a catalog of almost 40,000 letters sent to him and replies written by him. In addition, we discovered Haeckel’s remarkable correspondence in Finland. In particular, the founder of Finnish genetics and eugenics, Harry Federley, caught our attention. Anthropology in Finland was not contaminated by racial hygiene. The subject of the correspondence was not “Sami”, “Gypsies”, “Jews”, etc.: instead, “degenerates”, “feeble-minded”, “crazy”, “alcoholics” and “criminals” were discussed.
A review of Haeckel's Swedish correspondence leads to the following conclusion:
“You practically won’t find any serious criticism of Haeckel’s ideas in letters. Haeckel corresponded with many leading Swedish scientists and cultural figures, therefore, most likely, both the philosophical ideas of monism and Darwinism penetrated into Sweden due to the popularity of Haeckel’s books.”
Most of Haeckel's 39 Swedish correspondents were members of the Swedish royal academy sciences - the one that chooses Nobel laureates. The local admirers of Haeckel's views also held varied political beliefs.
Conclusion
Speaking of “Haeckelianism,” we again and again recall the words from 1 Corinthians 12:23: “And those who seem to us to be less noble in the body, we take more care of.”
Directly opposite ideas were formed in turning point years spread of evolutionary ideology. It was a violent intellectual revolution. Along with this ideology, views were accepted that today’s apologists for evolution would simply recoil from. Haeckel was taken to the “seat of Moses” and given the “keys of understanding.” The biogenetic law, the linear evolution of cultures, the spontaneous generation of life, the denial of entropy and Lamarckian mechanisms tipped the scales towards the theory of evolution.
Were Haeckel's drawings a deliberate falsification, or did he himself not notice his own desires to pass off wishful thinking? It's hard to say. However, one thing is clear: Haeckelian materialism and outright anti-Christian and anti-Semitic rhetoric were in demand. Haeckel's teaching was accepted almost as a heuristic principle, not limited to embryos and recapitulation.
Ernst Haeckel was a Darwinian demagogue, and the scientific community showed criminal frivolity in reproducing his falsifications. “Self-regulation” of the process scientific research, maybe it allows you to correct some minor errors, but it is too liberal in terms of mistakes made in order to prove the “necessary” theory. As a result, scientists only strain out the mosquito while swallowing the camel.
Did “Haeckelism” manage to conquer other countries? This can be evidenced huge amount still unexamined letters stored in the archives of the Haeckel House Museum in Jena.
Acknowledgments
Articles on the topic
Links and notes
- The article was written based on the following publications: Ojala, P.J., Haeckelian legacy of popularization - vertebrate embryos and the survival of the fake, Challenges for Bioethics from Asia, Fifth Asian Bioethics Conference (Tsukuba, Japan), Eubios Ethics Institute Vol. 5, pp. 391 - 412, 2004; and Ojala, P.J., Vahakangas, J.M. and Leisola, M., Evolutionism in the Haeckelian shadow - Harry Federley, the father of the Finnish genetics and eugenics legislation, as a recapitulationist and a Monist propagator, Yearbook for European Culture of Science (Stuttgart, Germany) 1(1):61-86, 2005.
- Sander, K., Ernst Haeckel’s ontogenetic recapitulation: irritation and incentive from 1866 to our time, Annals in Anatomy 184:523 533.2002.
- Collected Letters of Charles Darwin online, document 4555 dated July 1864.
- http://www2.uni-jena.de/biologie/ehh/haeckel.htm - August 7, 2005
- Breidbach, O., The former synthesis - Some remarks on the typological background of Haeckel’s ideas about evolution, Theory in Biosciences 121:280-296, 2002
- Darwin, C. The Origin of the Species, 6th London edition, 1872; introduction to Part II. Quoted from: Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species”, 1872; introduction to part II - http://charles-darwin.narod.ru/chapter14.html - March 25, 2009.
Known as the "Darwinian Bulldog of the Continent" and the "Huxley of Germany", Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a scientist who constantly cheated to promote the theory of evolution.
Haeckel was born on February 16, 1834 in Potsdam, Prussia ( modern Germany). He studied medicine and other sciences in Würzburg and Berlin University. From 1865 until his retirement in 1909, he served as professor of zoology at Jena. The turning point in his thinking came after he read Charles Darwin's work " Origin of species", which was translated into German in 1860.
In a letter to his mistress, written when he was 64 years old (which is when he received the nickname "The Horsefly of Jena"), he says that he was originally a Christian, but after studying evolution he became a freethinker and pantheist.
Darwin believed that it was Haeckel's enthusiastic propagation of the doctrine of organic evolution that ensured the success of the theory of evolution in Germany. Ian Taylor writes:
“He (Haeckel) became the main supporter of Darwin in Europe, who proclaimed evolutionary doctrine with the ardor of an evangelist not only to the intelligentsia, but also to ordinary people through popular books and to the working class through lectures in rented halls."
During these lectures he used numerous posters that depicted embryos, skeletons, etc. As a result, his performances were often called "Darwin's passions"!
Imaginary view of Monera
Haeckel's enthusiasm for the theory of evolution led him to fraudulently fabricate "data" that supported his views. He was the first person to draw the evolutionary "family tree" of humanity. In order to plug the clearly gaping hole between inorganic, lifeless matter and the first signs of life, he created a whole series of images of tiny protoplasmic organisms, which he gave the name Monera. According to him, these organisms:
Haeckel's depiction of the feeding mode and reproductive cycle of the supposed species of Moner, to which he gave the scientific name Pseudopodia ( ), as stated in his book entitled " Creation Story" The intricacy of the design indicates the extent of its fraud, since Moneron did not exist either in the past or in the present!
In 1868, a prestigious German scientific magazine devoted 73 pages to Haeckel’s theory, on which it also included more than 30 drawings of this imaginary view. Monera(as well as scientific names of other organisms, such as protoamoeba, Protamoeba primitivia). The drawings also depicted the process of cell splitting by which these species supposedly reproduced, despite the fact that their detailed descriptions and carefully composed drawings were completely fictitious, since these “particles of life” never existed.
Later that same year, Thomas Huxley, an ardent defender of Darwin in England, reported that he had discovered something that was similar to the species described by Haeckel. Huxley discovered this in samples of silt preserved in alcohol, which was obtained from the bottom North Atlantic. Huxley named his discovery Bathybius haeckelii.
Unfortunately for Huxley, Haeckel, Moner's species, and the theory of evolution, in 1875 a chemist aboard an expedition ship discovered that these dubious samples of protoplasm were nothing more than amorphous lime sulfate precipitated from sea water alcohol! Haeckel refused to accept this proof that he was wrong and continued to mislead people for 50 years with uncorrected reprints of his popular book entitled Creation Story(1876), which contained images of Moner. Changes were made only in the last edition in 1923.
Non-existent "ape-man dumb"
Story about or “the dumb ape-man” is nothing more than a product of Haeckel’s imagination.
Human thinking was much more important to Haeckel than facts and data. In his opinion, the only thing that distinguished man from ape was his ability to speak. Therefore, he assumed the existence of an intermediate link between monkey and man, which he called (the dumb ape-man) and even asked the artist, Gabriel Max, to draw this imaginary creature, despite the fact that he had no no data, which could help create a rough image.
Haeckel's contemporary, Professor Rudolf Virchow (founder of cellular pathology and for many years president of the Berlin Anthropological Society), subjected Haeckel's theory to harsh criticism. He believed that giving a zoological name to a creature whose reality no one had proven was a huge mockery of science.
In the last century, the Dutch scientist, Professor G. H. R. von Koeningswald, described the drawing as follows:
“Under a tree, a woman with long, slicked hair sits cross-legged and holds a child in her arms. She has a flat nose, thick lips, large feet, and thumb on the foot is noticeably shorter than the other toes. Her husband stands next to her, with a sagging belly and low forehead. His back is thickly covered with hair. He looks friendly and stupid, with the suspicious expression of a drunkard on his face. They must be happy together; they don’t quarrel, because neither of them knows how to talk.”
No such confirmed "missing link" has ever been discovered.
The Infamous “Fish Stage” of Human Embryo Development
Of all Haeckel's dubious deeds, for which he became most famous, the propagation of the completely false theory that he is completely similar to the embryos of all mammalian animals, and then goes through a stage in which he has gills like a fish, a tail like monkeys, etc. This idea, sometimes called the “law of recapitulation” or, in Haeckel’s own words, the “biogenetic law,” is the basis for the famous formulation “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” meaning that the development of a single embryo repeats the entire dubious evolutionary history.
Haeckel's fabricated drawings of dog and human embryos placed in the book "The Story of Creation".
Real Pictures dog (4th week of development) and human (4th week of development) embryos, edited by Ecker. Comparing with the pictures above, one can see the extent to which Haeckel fraudulently altered the images.
The first thing to note about this saying is that this “law” is not a law! Today it is already known that this idea is absolutely false. It is therefore not surprising that Haeckel could not find suitable anatomical evidence to support his theory. Haeckel couldn't let lack of evidence stand in his way, so he came up with a "proof" by shamelessly altering drawings of embryos made by two other scientists.
In his book entitled " Natural history of creation", published in Germany in 1868 (and in England in 1876 under the title " Creation Story"), Haeckel used a drawing of a 25-day-old embryo, which had previously been published by T. L. W. Bischoff in 1945, and a drawing of a 4-week-old human embryo, published by A. Ecker in 1851–59. This deception was exposed by Wilhelm His (1831–1904), a well-known scientist at the time in the field of comparative embryology and professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig.
Haeckel's confession of his deception
The indignation in German scientific circles was enormous, and Haeckel realized that he could no longer remain silent. In a letter to the newspaper Münchener Allegemeine Zeitung, (an international weekly publication on science, art and technology), in its January 9, 1909 issue, Haeckel (translated from German) wrote:
“... a tiny fraction of my drawings of embryos (probably 6 or 8 out of a hundred) are indeed (in the words of Dr. Brass, one of his critics) “falsified” - at the time of compiling these drawings, the material identified for examination was so insufficient, that I had no choice but to reconstruct the sequence of stages of development in order to fill the gaps of the hypothesis and, through comparative synthesis, to restore new missing links. What difficulties the compiler of drawings faces and how easily he can make mistakes can only be judged by an embryologist.”
Keen readers who compare Haeckel's fabricated images of dog and human embryos with images of natural embryos (see photographs) will easily understand that Haeckel's "confession" was itself a deliberate distortion of the facts and, in fact, an attempt to justify and forever preserve in history his shameful false drawings.
Despite this completely deceptive and very harmful basis for the theory of embryonic recapitulation and the fact that this basis is refuted by science itself, the absolutely false idea that the human embryo in the mother’s womb repeats its evolutionary past, until very recently, was implanted in the minds of schoolchildren and students as proof of evolution, and is still included in many popular science books.
But what's even worse is that an argument like "the fruit is still in the fish stage, so you're just killing the fish" and is still used today by abortion doctors to convince young women and girls that killing an unborn child is okay.
Regarding this, Dr. Henry Morris writes:
"We can legitimately blame the killing of millions of defenseless, unborn children on this evolutionary nonsense of recapitulation - or at least on the pseudoscientific rationale evolutionists give it." /span>
Haeckel and the rise of Nazism
Unfortunately, despite all his heinous actions, Haeckel was a great success in Germany, not only because his ideas promoted evolution as an origin story, but also because he infected the people of Germany with a unique form of social Darwinism and racism. “He became one of the main ideologists of racism, nationalism and imperialism in Germany”.
This has led to the belief that Germans are members of a biologically superior society (akin to Nietzsche's "super-humans").
Unfortunately for all humanity, Haeckel's evolutionism laid the foundation for militarism in Germany, which ultimately contributed to the outbreak of the First World War. And then,
“Social Darwinism, racism, militarism and imperialism finally culminated in Nazi Germany under the monstrous leadership of Adolf Hitler...Hitler himself became the most important evolutionist, and Nazism the main fruit of the evolutionary tree.”
Thus, through his obsession with the anti-divine principles of evolution and his scandalous fabrication of false data, Haeckel became the source bad influence and destructive inspiration, which became an indirect cause of two world wars and the brutality of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
Links and notes
- Ian Taylor "In the Minds of Men", publishing house TFE Publishing, Toronto, 1984, p. 184, which quotes the words of Peter Klemm from his book " Horsefly from Jena", Urania Press, Leipzig, 1968.
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was born on February 16, 1834 in the province of Potsdam, which at that time was part of Prussia. He studied at Cathedral High School in Merseburg. After graduating from school in 1852, Haeckel continued his medical studies in Berlin and Würzburg. He later entered the University of Jena, where, under the guidance of Karl Gegenbaur, he defended his doctorate in zoology. As a student, Haeckel showed interest in embryology. In 1857, Haeckel received the degree of Doctor of Medicine and received a license to practice his own. But Haeckel stopped liking the medical profession immediately after he met his first patients.
Career
From 1859 to 1866, Haeckel worked with such animal species as annelids, sponges and rayfish. While traveling around the Mediterranean region, he discovered more than 150 new species of rayfish. And between 1859 and 1887 he discovered thousands of new species. In 1862, Ernest Haeckel became lecturer in comparative anatomy at the University of Jena, a position he held for 47 years until 1909. In 1866, Haeckel visited the Canary Islands with Hermann Faul, where he met Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell.
Haeckel proposed an improved version of Etienne Serres's biogenetic law, in which he argued that there is a close connection between biological development organism, or ontogenesis, and their evolution and phylogeny. To illustrate the biogenetic law, Haeckel used drawings of embryos and proposed the concept of heterochronism - changes in the time of fetal development during evolution.
Darwin's idea of the origin of species influenced Haeckel's work, The Natural History of Creation, written in Germany.
In 1866, Haeckel published the book "General Morphology of Organisms", which was a synthesis of Darwin's ideas, German philosophy of nature and Lamarck's theory of evolution, which Haeckel accordingly called "Darwinismus". He used morphology to reinterpret the theory of evolution due to the fact that there were not enough organic remains to develop embryology that could be used as evidence of family relationships. He even went further and argued that the origins of humanity can be traced back to South Asia, where the first humans originated. He believed that primates from South Asia have great resemblance with people. He also rejected Darwin's idea that the primates of Africa were similar to humans.
Haeckel believed that part of the ancient continent of Gondwana in the Indian Ocean was the source of human development, which later moved to other parts of the world. In his book The History of Creation, Haeckel describes the migration routes that the first people used after emerging from Gondwanaland.
The number of Haeckel's drawings totals more than 100 copies, including images of animals, especially aquatic animals.
Haeckel also studied philosophy and wrote such works as “The Riddle” and “The Riddle of the Universe and the Freedom of Learning and Teaching.”
Personal life and death
In 1867, Haeckel married Agnes Huschke. The couple had two daughters, Emma and Elisabeth, and a son named Walter. After the death of his wife in 1915, Haeckel became morally unstable. In 1918 he sold his large house to the Carl Zeiss Foundation. Ernst Haeckel died on August 9, 1919 in Germany.
Main works
"Radiolaria" (1862)
"Siphonophora" (1869)
"Monophyletischer Stambaum der Organismen from "Generalelle Morphologie der Organismen"" (1866)
"Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte" (1868)
"Monera" (1870)
"Calcareous Sponges" (1872)
"Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre" (1877)
"Deep-Sea Medusae" (1881)
"Indische Reisebriefe" (1882)
"Siphonophora" (1888)
"Deep-Sea Keratosa" (1889)
"Radiolaria" (1887)
"Die systematische Phylogenie" (1894)
"Die Welträthsel" (1895-1899)
"Über unsere gegenwärtige Kenntnis vom Ursprung des Menschen" (1898)
"Aus Insulinde: Malayische Reisebriefe" (1901)
"Kunstformen der Natur" (1904)
"Wanderbilder" (1905)
