Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology

E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

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• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 27
• Langue: English

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Title: Form and Function
A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology
Author: E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
Release Date: January 23, 2007 [EBook #20426]
Language: English
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FORM AND FUNCTION
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE
HISTORY OF ANIMAL MORPHOLOGY

By E. S. RUSSELL,
M.A., B.Sc., F.Z.S.

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.1916
All rights reserved
Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have
been corrected, all other inconsistencies in
spelling and punctuation are as in the original.
PREFACE
This book is not intended to be a full or detailed history of animal morphology: a
complete account is given neither of morphological discoveries nor of
morphological theories. My aim has been rather to call attention to the
existence of diverse typical attitudes to the problems of form, and to trace the
interplay of the theories that have arisen out of them.
The main currents of morphological thought are to my mind three—the
functional or synthetic, the formal or transcendental, and the materialistic or
disintegrative.
The first is associated with the great names of Aristotle, Cuvier, and von Baer,
and leads easily to the more open vitalism of Lamarck and Samuel Butler. The
typical representative of the second attitude is E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and this
habit of thought has greatly influenced the development of evolutionary
morphology.
The main battle-ground of these two opposing tendencies is the problem of the
relation of function to form. Is function the mechanical result of form, or is form
merely the manifestation of function or activity? What is the essence of life—
organisation or activity?
The materialistic attitude is not distinctively biological, but is common to
practically all fields of thought. It dates back to the Greek atomists, and the
triumph of mechanical science in the 19th century has induced many to accept
materialism as the only possible scientific method. In biology it is more akin to
the formal than to the functional attitude.
In the course of this book I have not hidden my own sympathy with the
functional attitude. It appears to me probable that more insight will be gained
into the real nature of life and organisation by concentrating on the active
response of the animal, as manifested both in behaviour and in
morphogenesis, particularly in the post-embryonic stages, than by giving
attention exclusively to the historical aspect of structure, as is the custom of
"pure morphology." I believe we shall only make progress in this direction if we
frankly adopt the simple everyday conception of living things—which many of
us have had drilled out of us—that they are active, purposeful agents, not mere
complicated aggregations of protein and other substances. Such an attitude is
probably quite as sound philosophically as the opposing one, but I have not in
this place attempted any justification of it. I have touched very lightly upon the
controversy between vitalism and materialism which has been revived with the
early years of the present century. It hardly lends itself as yet to historical
treatment, and I could hardly hope to maintain with regard to it that objectiveattitude which should characterise the historian.
The main result I hope to have achieved with this book is the demonstration,
tentative and incomplete as it is, of the essential continuity of animal
morphology from the days of Aristotle down to our own time. It is unfortunately
true that modern biology, perhaps in consequence of the great advances it has
made in certain directions, has to a considerable extent lost its historical
consciousness, and if this book helps in any degree to counteract this tendency
so far as animal morphology is concerned, it will have served its purpose.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends Dr James F. Gemmill and Prof. J. Arthur
Thomson for much kindly encouragement and helpful criticism. The credit for
the illustrations is due to my wife, Mrs Jehanne A. Russell. One is from Nature;
the others are drawn from the original figures.
E. S. R.
Chelsea, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. The Beginnings of Comparative Anatomy 1
II. Comparative Anatomy before Cuvier 17
III. Cuvier 31
IV. Goethe 45
V. Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire 52
VI. The Followers of Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire 79
VII. The German Transcendentalists 89
VIII. Transcendental Anatomy in England—Richard Oven 102
IX. Karl Ernst von Baer 113
X. The Embryological Criterion 133
XI. The Cell-Theory 169
XII. The Close of the Pre-evolutionary Period 190
XIII. The Relation of Lamarck and Darwin to Morphology 213
XIV. Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gegenbaur 246
XV. Early Theories on the Origin of Vertebrates 268
XVI. The Germ-layers and Evolution 288
XVII. The Organism as an Historical Being 302
XVIII. The Beginnings of Causal Morphology 314
XIX. Samuel Butler and the Memory Theories of Heredity 335XX. The Classical Tradition in Modern Morphology 345
Index 365
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. Page
1. Hyoid Arch of the Conger. (Original.) 58
2. "Vertebra" of a Pleuronectid. (Geoffroy.) 61
3. Abdominal Segment of the Lobster. (Geoffroy.) 63
4. Ideal Typical Vertebra. (Owen.) 102
5. Natural Typical Vertebra. (Owen.) 103
6. The Archetype of the Vertebrate Skeleton. (Owen.) 105
7. Ideal Transverse Section of a Vertebrate Embryo. (Von
Baer.) 119
8. Gill-slits of the Pig Embryo. (Rathke.) 134
9. Meckel's Cartilage and Ear-ossicles in Embryo of Pig.
(Reichert.) 145
10. Cranial Vertebræ and Visceral Arches in Embryo of Pig.
(Reichert.) 148
11. Embryonic Cranium of the Adder. (Rathke.) 152
12. Transverse Section of Chick Embryo. (Remak.) 211
13. Development of the Ascidian Larva (Kowalevsky.) 272
14. Transverse Section of the Worm NAIS. (Semper.) 280
15. The Five Primary Stages of Ontogeny. (Haeckel.) 292
001FORM AND FUNCTION
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY
The first name of which the history of anatomy keeps record is that of
Alcmaeon, a contemporary of Pythagoras (6th century B.C.). His interests
appear to have been rather physiological than anatomical. He traced the chief
nerves of sense to the brain, which he considered to be the seat of the soul,
and he made some good guesses at the mechanism of the organs of specialsense. He showed that, contrary to the received opinion, the seminal fluid did
not originate in the spinal cord. Two comparisons are recorded of his, one that
puberty is the equivalent of the flowering time in plants, the other that milk is the
[1]equivalent of white of egg. Both show his bias towards looking at the
functional side of living things. The latter comparison reappears in Aristotle.
A century later Diogenes of Apollonia gave a description of the venous system.
He too placed the seat of sensation in the brain. He assumed a vital air in all
living things, being in this influenced by Anaximenes whose primitive matter
was infinite air. In following out this thought he tried to prove that both fishes
[2]and oysters have the power of breathing.
A more strictly morphological note is struck by a curious saying of Empedocles
(4th century B.C.), that "hair and foliage and the thick plumage of birds are
[3]one."
002In the collected writings of Hippocrates and his school, the Corpus
Hippocraticum, of which no part is later than the end of the 5th century, there
are recorded many anatomical facts. The author of the treatise "On the
Muscles" knew, for instance, that the spinal marrow is different from ordinary
marrow and has membranes continuous with those of the brain. Embryos of
seven days (!) have all the parts of the body plainly visible. Work on
comparative embryology is contained in the treatise "On the Development of
[4]the Child."
The author of the treatise "On the Joints," which Littré calls "the great surgical
monument of antiquity," is to be credited with the first systematic attempt at
comparative anatomy, for he compared the human skeleton with that of other
Vertebrates.
[5]Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) may fairly be said to be the founder of comparative
anatomy, not because he was specially interested in problems of "pure
morphology," but because he described the structure of many animals and
classified them in a scientific way. We shall discuss here the morphological
ideas which occur in his writings upon animals—in the HISTORIA ANIMALIUM , the
De Partibus Animalium, and the De Generatione Animalium.
The Historia Animalium is a most comprehensive work, in some ways the finest