| Popis: |
Richards describes the contributions of romantic naturalists to the mainstream of late-nineteenth-century biology. He uses as a test case Carl Gustav Carus, a disciple of Oken and Schelling, and a protege of Goethe. Carus was a leading romantic artist and anatomist who empirically demonstrated the vertebral theory of the skull. Ernst Mayr disdained Carus but should have known better. Carus’s life and major works reveal an extraordinary scientist, whose ideas quietly flowed into the main currents of modern biology. His conception of the archetype was appropriated by Richard Owen, without attribution, and became integral to the theory of homology. His notion of the unity of type served as a pillar of Darwinian evolution. Yet, Carus himself could not endorse Darwin’s theory—for aesthetic reasons. |
