The history of creation; or, The development of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of natural causes: a popular exposition of the doctrine of ... Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in Volume 1, pt. 1

by Ernst Haeckel

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. ...order and of tlio simplest character, namely, those neutral primitive beings which stand midway between animals and plants, and on the whele correspond with our 2'otiata. "These zoophytes," he remarks in another passage, "are the original forms out of which all the organisms of the higher classes have arisen by gradual development. Wo are further of opinion that every species, as well as every individual, has certain periods of growth, of bloom, and of decay, but that the decay of a species is degeneration, not dissolution, as in the case of the individual. From this it appears to us to follow that it was not the great catastrophes of the earth (as is generally supposed) which destroyed the animals of the primitive world, but that many survived them, and it is more probable that they have disappeared from existing nature, becauso the species to which they belonged have completed the circlo of their existence, and have become changed into other kinds." When Treviranus, in this and other passages, points to degeneration as the most important cause of the transformation of the animal and vegetable species, he does not understand by it what is now commonly called degeneration. With him "degeneration" is exactly what wo now call Adaptation or modification, by the action of external formative forces. That Treviranus explained this transtransformation of organic species by Adaptation, and its preservation by Inheritance, and thus the whele variety of organic forms by the inter-action of Adaptation and Inheritance, is clear also from several other passages. How profoundly he grasped the mutual dependence of all living creatures on one another, and in general the universal connection between cause and...

Genres: Science

64 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2007

About the author

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 – August 9, 1919), also written von Haeckel, was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and the kingdom Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Art Forms of Nature"). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträtsel (1895–1899, in English, The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution.