The Tragic Sense of Life
Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought
Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin’s foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of intelligent design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards’s intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written, as well as a moving account of Haeckel’s eventful life.
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“In this masterful biography, characterized by ‘its illuminatingly clear presentation and extremely elegant form’ (as a contemporary once described a talk by Haeckel), Robert J. Richards weaves together the diverse threads of Haeckel’s life: his passion for science and Romantic philosophy, his loves and losses, his numerous dustups with colleagues, and his unfortunate misrepresentation of the evidence for evolution, which has tainted his reputation down to the present.”—Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“The Tragic Sense of Life is a masterwork of scholarship. Robert Richards brings vividly to life one of the most fascinating figures in the history of science and chronicles and assesses his achievements. As important is the way that Richards locates Haeckel both within the history of evolutionary theory in the years after Darwin, and within his own German society. Anyone who wants to understand the late nineteenth century must read this book and anyone who loves a good story for its own sake will read this book.”—Michael Ruse, Florida State University
“If Thomas Henry Huxley was Darwin’s bulldog, the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel was his bard: demon researcher, talented artist, inspired popularizer, and perfervid Romantic. Robert Richards has given us a sensitive portrait of Haeckel, a fair and lucid account of his controversial scientific theories, and the best overview to date of how Darwinism became a cause, a metaphysics, and even a kind of religion in the waning decades of the nineteenth century.”—Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“The Tragic Sense of Life is an immensely impressive work of biography and intellectual history, and a fitting testament to a complex and contradictory character. . . . Richards succeeds brilliantly in re-establishing Haeckel as a significant scientist and a major figure in the history of evolutionary thought.”—P. D. Smith, Times Literary Supplement
"The Tragic Sense of Life, by Robert J. Richards, provides not only a biography of the controversial German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), but also an important piece of the emerging picture of the Darwinian Revolution in its international and intergenerational dimensions. . . . Richards’s analysis brings Haeckel and Darwin closer together than ever before, even for those of us who resist making Romantics of them both. By doing so, and by defending Haeckel from the excesses of his critics and bringing out the personal side of his science, this book marks a major rehabilitation of Haeckel as a mainstream Darwinian, and a full-blooded one at that. It writes Germany into the larger story of the international development of Darwinism in a new way, and it injects welcome doses of drama, romance and natural beauty into the story."—Sander Gliboff, American Scientist
"Haeckel has now found his champion in historian Robert J Richards who sets out to change forever the general perception of this man, whom he regards as one of the greatest in the history of the life sciences. . . . Thanks to Richards’s magnificent biography, Haeckel will never again be discounted."—Michael Ruse, The Lancet
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Introduction
The Tragic Source of the Anti-Religious Character of Evolutionary Theory
2. Formation of a Romantic Biologist
Early Student Years
University Years
Habilitation and Engagement
3. Research in Italy and Conversion to Darwinism
Friendship with Allmers and Temptations of the Bohemian Life
Radiolarians and the Darwinian Explanation
Appendix: Haeckel’s Challenger Investigations
4. Triumph and Tragedy at Jena
Habilitation and Teaching
Friendship with Gegenbaur
For Love of Anna
The Defender of Darwin
Tragedy in Jena
5. Evolutionary Morphology in the Darwinian Mode
Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie der Organismen
Haeckel’s Darwinism
Reaction to Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie
Conclusion
Appendix: Haeckel’s Letter to Darwin
6. Travel to England and the Canary Islands: Experimental Justification of Evolution
Visit to England and Meeting with Darwin
Travel to the Canary Islands
Research on Siphonophores
Entwickelungsmechanik
A Polymorphous Sponge: The Analytical Evidence for Darwinian Theory
Conclusion: A Naturalist Voyaging
7. The Popular Presentation of Evolution
Haeckel’s Natural History of Creation
Conclusion: Evolutionary Theory and Racism
8. The Rage of the Critics
Critical Objections and Charges of Fraud
Haeckel’s Responses to His Critics
The Epistemology of Photograph and Fact: Renewed Charges of Fraud
The Munich Confrontation with Virchow: Science vs. Socialism
Conclusion
9. The Religious Response to Evolutionism: Ants, Embryos, and Jesuits
Haeckel’s Journey to the Tropics: The Footprint of Religion
“Science Has Nothing to Do with Christ”—Darwin
Erich Wasmann, a Jesuit Evolutionist
The Keplerbund vs. the Monistebund
The Response of the Forty-six
Conclusion
10. Love in a Time of War
At Long Last Love
The World Puzzles
The Consolations of Love
Second Journey to the Tropics—Java and Sumatra
Growth in Love and Despair
Lear on the Heath
The Great War
11. Conclusion: The Tragic Sense of Ernst Haeckel
Early Assessments of Haeckel Outside of Germany
Haeckel in the English-Speaking World at Midcentury
Haeckel Scholarship in Germany (1900–Present)
The Contemporary Evaluation: Haeckel and the Nazis Again
The Tragedy of Haeckel’s Life and Science
Appendix 1: A Brief History of Morphology
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776–1847)
Lorenz Oken (1779–1851)
Friedrich Tiedemann (1781–1861)
Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869)
Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800–1862)
Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876)
Richard Owen (1804–1892)
Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
Appendix 2: The Moral Grammar of Narratives in the History of Biology—the Case of Haeckel and Nazi Biology
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