The reception of Haeckel in pre-revolutionary Russia and his impact on evolutionary theory

The biogenetic law and the Gastraea theory: From Ernst Haeckel's discoveries to contemporary views

More than 150 years ago, in 1866, Ernst Haeckel published a book in two volumes called Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (General Morphology of Organisms) in the first volume of which he formulated his biogenetic law, famously stating that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Here, we describe Haeckel's original idea as first formulated in the Generelle Morphologie der Organismen and later further developed in other publications until the present situation in which molecular data are used to test the "hourglass model," which can be seen as a modern version of the biogenetic law. We also tell the story about his discovery, while traveling in Norway, of an unknown organism, Magosphaera planula, that was important in that it helped to precipitate his ideas into what was to become the Gastraea theory. We also follow further development and reformulations of the Gastraea theory by other scientists, notably the Russian school. Elias Metchnikoff developed the Phagocytella hypothesis for the origin of metazoans based on studies of a colonial flagellate. Alexey Zakhvatin focused on deducing the ancestral life cycle and the cell types of the last common ancestor of all metazoans, and Kirill V. Mikhailov recently pursued this line of research further.

Scientific traditions in conflict: the Rusconi-von Baer controversy on the embryology of frogs and the development of the cell theory

In 1835, the meaning of the cleavage furrows in the division of frog eggs was the cause of a heated argument between the Italian naturalist Mauro Rusconi and Karl Ernst von Baer. These furrows were first described by Prévost and Dumas (Ann Sci Nat 2:100-121, 129-149, 1824b) who did not realize they cut the egg into separate masses. Rusconi (Développement de la grenouille comune depuis le moment de sa naissance jusque a son état parfait, Giusti, Milano, 1826) hypothesized a connection between the furrows and a peculiar crystallization of the content of the egg which eventually produced elementary molecules as the building blocks of the embryo. von Baer (Arch Anat Phys Wiss Med 6:481-509, 1834) was the first to establish a link between the furrows and an active process of dichotomous division he considered to be the basis for all further development and differentiation. The present paper analyses the theoretical reasons behind these divergent interpretations and focuses attention on their implications for the development of the cell theory and the conceptions of life. Prévost, Dumas and Rusconi interpreted cleavage and the whole embryonic development in the light of eighteenth-century scientific theories and the French materialism of the early nineteenth century, which explained life in terms of ordered molecular movement. Starting from other premises partly rooted in German philosophy von Baer (1834) gave a totally different picture which anticipated the cell theory and modern embryology.

Ernst Haeckel, Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay and the racial controversy over the Papuans

Background

The “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a key figure during the first “Darwinian revolution“, a time when the foundations of the modern evolutionary theory were laid. It was Haeckel, who crucially contributed to the visualization of the Darwinian theory by designing “genealogical-trees” illustrating the evolution of various species, including humans. Although the idea of explaining human evolution by natural selection belongs to Darwin, Haeckel was the first who attempted to create a new exact anthropology based on the Darwinian method.

Discussion

Trying to immediately reconstruct human evolution proceeding from the description of modern populations led Haeckel to the views which, from the contemporary perspective, are definitely racist. Haeckel created racial anthropology intending to prove human origins from a lower organism, but without the intention of establishing a discriminatory racial praxis. Although hierarchical in its outcome, the Haeckelian method did not presuppose the necessity of a racial hierarchy of currently living humans. It is crucial to grasp in what sense Haeckel’s theoretical explorations in human evolution were racist, and in what sense they were not. Our argument flows as follows. One of Haeckel’s pupils was the Russian ethnographer, anthropologist and zoologist Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Miklucho-Maclay (1846–1888). Maclay and Haeckel worked closely together for several years; they traveled jointly and Maclay had enough time to learn the major methodological principles of Haeckel’s research. Yet in contrast to Haeckel, Maclay is regarded as one of the first scientific anti-racists, who came to anti-racist views using empirical field studies in Papua-New Guinea.

Conclusions

We claim that while conducting these studies Maclay applied scientific principles to a significant extent acquired from Haeckel. The paper contributes to the view that Haeckel’s theoretical racism did not follow the Darwinian method he used.