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1

Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) and the forgotten episode of the history of transformism. On the 230th anniversary of birth of a naturalist and poet

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Bednarczyk A.
Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki
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2012
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vol. 57
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issue 2
27-96
EN
In the article, theoretical and methodological views in biology of an outstanding poet and naturalist-botanist A. von Chamisso were reconstructed. Scarce and almost unknown textual evidence was exploited. It consisted of, among others, a story-fable Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte. Chamisso’s views were close to those of A. von Humboldt and bore an empiristic character in the period when a general trend in the German biology was set by representatives of romantic philosophy of nature. This empiristic attitude made Chamisso an ardent supporter of the doctrine of the immutability of species and an opponent of all attempts to develop scientific investigations in a speculative way. According to Chamisso, empiricism also spoke against abiogenesis. In the historical aspect, he gave life a static form, depriving it of the dimension of time, as if he had described the picture of geological cross-section made across the outer layers of the earth’s crust. Nature – the subject of his study – appeared in his descriptions as a holistic, total object. Nature-wholeness portrayed in his depiction was gaining specificity, taking form on the ground of interaction of its parts. The man was treated by Chamisso as an important link in the natural economy, as an instrument, which is used by nature in its activity. Species – the subject of his interest as a taxonomist – was bestowed by Chamisso the real existence in nature. The validity of laws governing the animate world he spread equally to all its creation – from the simplest forms to the most complex. Chamisso was not a narrowly specialized empiricist, but a naturalist who was familiar with methodological reflection, he noticed and solved general theoretical problems, consistently obeying methodological rules. He created to a large extent coherent, but not very developed theoretical conception, which favourably stood out against a background of the 19th century German biology controlled by the romantic philosophy of nature. Taking such a theoretical and methodological position as described, Chamisso was the first to come out against to the highest degree speculative conception of metamorphosis (it should not be confused with the conception of metamorphosis of plants by J.W. Goethe), which was developed in the 20s and 40s of the 19th century by C.A. Agardh, F.T. Kützing and Ch.F. Hornschuch, whose foundation was their research mostly on lower organisms (algae, fungi, lichens and protozoans). Their conception in these three different versions was reconstructed in detail in the article. These versions have a common conviction that at this lower organizational level of the animate world there is abiogenesis: in the presence of the observer there are constant and two-way transitions between the plant and animal worlds. One plant species transforms into another, filamentous algae become elements of higher plants, unicellular organisms become multicellular (even the cormophytes) and these in turn break up into unicellular organisms. There is a terminological relic coming from that period - „zoospore”, denoting animal creature that a plant organism – alga – gave rise to. These three versions have also ordinary technical errors, as well as observational errors in the gradually recognized field of lower plants, still insufficient familiarity with microscope, lack of appropriate criticism towards collected alleged facts, but above all neglecting the basic rules of scientific investigation used in those times, or even common sense. Such an approach was encouraged by the activity of the representatives of German philosophy of nature. On the one hand, all three naturalists were aware how complex were the phenomena they wanted to investigate, what kind of difficulties they might encounter studying algae in algological investigations, because they wrote about it many times. On the other hand, they did not sufficiently control research procedures they applied, despite the fact they had at their disposal all the means to do it. At the same time, they resorted to pseudo-hypotheses lacking signs of probability. What is interesting is that the conception of metamorphosis found its ideological milieu on the continent, while it did not spread in Great Britain. On the contrary, it not only did not have its proponents here but also met with severe criticism, twenty years after polemic dissertation by Chamisso. Errors enumerated above concerning conception of metamorphosis were criticised in a particularly detailed manner by Chamisso in his dissertation. His criticism was developed on the factual, technical, theoretical and practical ground. Chamisso as a taxonomist-practicioner did not allow the thought that a species could be deprived of immutability, a feature extremely important exactly in the practice of a taxonomist. Species and genera must be characterized by immutability, wrote Chamissso, or else they do not exist at all. Two years later, Franz Paula Schrank expressed similar criticism, which was also included in the article. Reconstructed for the first time the conception of metamorphosis was based on original, little-known and coming from those times textual materials which were mentioned in the article.
2

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832). The Genetic Method and the French Aphorism. The 180th anniversary of the poet-naturalist’s death

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Bednarczyk A.
Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki
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2012
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vol. 57
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issue 3-4
7-65
EN
The present-day scientific issues (participation in a dispute between G. Cuvier and É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1830 in the form of a two-part article written on this topic - 1830, 1832) and also the editorial activities connected with the scientific field – such as, participation in the editing and publishing (1831) of a French translation of his former botanical study Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (1790), which he recently provided with revised additional materials (the autobiography of the poet as a naturalist and the course of reception of the concept of metamorphosis) were matters which imported Goethe nearly until the last years of his life. It was in Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären where a detail previously absent from his natural writings appeared there for the first time, namely a French motto opening a part containing these additional materials: Voir venir les choses est le meilleur moyen de les expliquer. This only one sentence, maintained in the aphoristic form, whose author was, a little known at that time, French botanist and illustrator, Pierre-Jean-François Turpin (1775-1840), explains in the most concise way possible the very essence of the genetic method. This said method, widely practiced by Goethe in the natural studies from the early age, constituted an important component of his methodological set of instruments and gave a special expression to his way of understanding the world. The article analyses the German translation of Turpin’s aphorism, as made by Goethe, in which a certain teleological nuance was noticed, not existing in the original French version; as such, it remains in an apparent contradiction with the general and antiteleological scientific attitude of Goethe. The mentioned aphorism was compared in terms of accuracy to several translations into European languages. Furthermore, the question of Turpin’s aphorism being allegedly assigned to Aristotle was also taken into consideration. In the article, the proper genetic method based on textual evidences, drawn from Goethe's scientific works, was reconstructed and its extensive and varied applications familiar to the poet natural sciences. It was noted that the developed by Goethe genetic method (similarly as presenting it Turpin’s aphorism) had its origins in the same morphology, was used to solve specific epistemological problems of biology at that time, and was not the product of - contrary to what many historians of biology claim - influential in those days German Naturphilosophie. In the article, above all, however, a lot of attention was paid to the position which the genetic method occupied in morphology, interpreted by Goethe in a physiological and typological way. Particularly great importance was paid to it in the developed by Goethe theory of morphological type associated with a comparative method and introducing there the principle of continuity, to which he assigned a special theoretical and philosophical importance. Finally, the relations of the genetic method with contemporary typological morphology and the used here concept of homology were presented.
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Minerały, istoty żywe i łącząca je koncepcja chemiczna

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Bednarczyk A.
Analecta. Studia i Materiały z Dziejów Nauki
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2013
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vol. 22
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issue 1-2(42-43)
67-125
EN
The starting point for the presented in this article considerations on the links between the inorganic and organic world, within the biological theory of Lamarck, has become a widespread in the historical literature opinion of a fundamental turn, which allegedly took place in Lamarck’s views of about 1800. This turn was to abandon the belief of the immutability of species and on the existence of the insurmountable hiatus between the inorganic and the organic world, and to adopt the view of species mutability and the existence of spontaneous generation, and therefore, the existence of a link between the two worlds. From the thesis on the existence of the above hiatus there were some completely false endeavors to deduce Lamarck’s view on the eternity of life (without any clear documented evidence proving the confirmation of this view), and the thesis itself was attempted to be bound with the adopted by Lamarck theory of chemistry, according to which, complex inorganic materials are the product of the process of life. The article traces the origins of the conception of hiatus, the conception of substantial quality differences separating the inorganic and organic world, and identifies the alleged motives that could lead to the adoption by Lamarck of so alien to his own worldview idea. By reference to the texts of Lamarck himself and testimonies of Sainte-Beuve, one could notice the total groundlessness of combining with this conception the idea of eternal life and making Lamarck its supporter, and thus, treating year 1800 as the absolute turning point in the development of the views of the French naturalist.
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