The German Genius

means—for example, by chemical combination. He was impressed by the examples of misbirth, for him powerful evidence to suggest that something analogous to “purpose” operates in the organic realm, “for the goal of constructing a functional organism is always visible in the products of organic nature, including its unsuccessful attempts.” For Kant, therefore, it was self-evident that the life sciences rested on a different set of principles from those of the physical sciences. 44
    Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813) studied in Göttingen during 1779 and 1780 and came into contact with the young Blumenbach. Timothy Lenoir, in his study of early German biologists, says Reil was possibly more original than Blumenbach. His treatise “Von der Lebenskraft,” in which he introduced his own conception of the vital force within a Kantian framework, was published in 1795 in the first volume of the new professional journal Archiv für die Physiologie . Reil too believed that each organism shows “purposive organisation” ( zweckmässige Form ) and that this was determined by the chemical affinities between the organic materials, “just as the seed [ Kern ] of a salt crystal attracts particles according to a particular law in which the basis of its cubic shape is to be found.” 45 This was, then, a sort of halfway-house theory, between Blumenbach’s and Kant’s. In Reil’s view the germ, in the mother, “slumbers without developing, probably because its organisation has too little irritability [ Reizbarkeit ]. The father enhances the animal force of the dormant germ perhaps through the addition of the fluid of his semen to the matter of the germ.” 46
    Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1763–1844) moved from Stuttgart to Göttingen, where he also was a pupil of Blumenbach from 1786 to 1788. His contributions helped to establish Pflanzenchemie , the beginnings of organic chemistry. In the course he taught on comparative zoology Kielmeyer conceived what he called the Physik des Tierreichs , the aim of which was to uncover the laws of organic form by comparing the anatomy of birds, amphibians, fish, insects, and worms. Kielmeyer also broke new ground when he used embryological criteria to establish affinities between animal forms. He realized that the patterns revealed in embryological development were confirmation that the system of animal organization did not require “the assumption of a special directive force existing outside of the individual organism, through which the life and economy of organic nature is maintained.” (Italics added.) There was no need for any “supra-material” organizing force. Kielmeyer, like Blumenbach, was unimpressed by the traditional idea of a Great Chain of Being; instead, he became convinced that species were transformed into others, albeit in a distinctive way: “Many species have apparently emerged from other species, just as the butterfly emerges from the caterpillar… They were originally development stages and only later achieved the rank of independent species ; they are transformed developmental stages. Others, on the other hand, are original children of the earth. Perhaps, however, all of these primitive ancestors have died out.” Kielmeyer noted that smaller organisms tended to have more offspring than larger ones, and from this concluded that there are “internal forces,” specific to species, that give rise to their characteristic structure and behavior. 47
    In purely biological terms, then, these late eighteenth-century scientists and philosophers had three operating conclusions/beliefs. 48 First, it was the task of the new fields of zoology and botany to reproduce in the organic realm what physics had done in the inorganic realm—namely “to investigate the most universal phenomena of matter and the special classes of phenomena which are not further reducible to others.” 49 Second, they identified (or assumed) a Lebenskraft or Bildungstrieb as the shaping principle of every organized body. Finally, Kant emphasized that man’s reason was insufficient ever to discover these “natural purposes,” or “teleological agents,” in the organic realm.
    T HE R ISE OF E VOLUTIONISM
     
    This battle between mechanist thought and vitalist thought would continue throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even up until the first quarter of the twentieth century. But, as Ernst Mayr points out, the years between the publication of the tenth edition of