Haeckel

HAECKEL, Ernst (Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919), German zoologist and philosopher, professor in Jena, a fervent preacher and popularizer of Darwinism (see), who constructed a consistent system of worldview based on Darwin's teaching. From his early acquaintance with Goethe's natural philosophy and from his university impressions (H. studied in Würzburg and Berlin and was a student of Johann Müller, Virchow, and Kelliker) H. derived a striving for synthesis, generalization, and a holistic understanding of the world based on the study of nature. The philosophy based on experience was his striving when he became acquainted with Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. This book, in which the teaching was beautifully consistent with H.'s favorite ideas about the unity and integrity of nature, the unity of forces ruling in the organic and inorganic nature, and the subordination of everything to the law of causality, made a tremendous impression on H. Becoming a fervent supporter of the Darwinian theory, H. openly defended it at the congress of German naturalists and physicians in Stettin in 1863. In 1866, H. published two huge volumes of 'General Morphology of Organisms', in which he set forth 'the principles of the science of organic forms, mechanically grounded in the reformed evolutionary theory of C. Darwin'. Five years later, Haeckel published a more popular book presenting his ideas, 'Natural History of the Universe', which had an unheard-of success and wide dissemination. In these books, he used data from comparative anatomy, morphology, and classification to construct the supposed blood relationship of animals according to the theory of evolution. For this construction, he widely used the history of the development of individuals (ontogeny), which, in his opinion, briefly repeats the history of the development of the species (phylogeny). This thought was named by him the basic biogenetic law (see). This hypothetical construction of the past of modern forms is dedicated to his other books: 'The Gastraea Theory', in which he expounded the teaching about the common two-layered ancestor of all multicellular animals, and 'Anthropogeny', in which he reproduced the history of the ancestors of man, beginning with monera and amoeba and ending with man-apes. H. also posed the question of the origin of living organisms and rejected the fundamental difference between them and inorganic bodies (H. considered that the psychic side is a function of all matter, therefore he taught about the 'soul' of atoms, the 'soul' of the cell, etc.). He admitted the origin of organisms from small, shapeless lumps of protein without a nucleus - 'monera', from which living cells were already formed by further differentiation. The monera themselves, according to Haeckel, originated from inanimate matter (spontaneously). H.'s favorite views on the unity of forces acting in nature he expounded in the form of a philosophical teaching named by him 'monism' (the book 'The Riddle of the World'), a teaching quite close to Holbach's materialism. He considered that matter and energy are separated from each other only in abstraction, in abstraction, but not in reality, since matter without energy and energy without matter cannot exist. Lavoisier's law of conservation of matter and Mayer's law of conservation of force he therefore united in one 'law of substance'. The basic principle in H.'s teaching was the concept of 'development'. He considered the teaching on development the greatest progress of human knowledge of nature. Under 'development in the widest sense of this word' H. understands 'constant changes of substance', under the history of development - 'history of substance'. Although this development has a tendency to improvement, this tendency, according to H.'s teaching, is explained neither by the planned direct conscious activity of a personal creator, nor by the unconscious activity of the so-called purposive final causes, but solely by the interaction of heredity and adaptation in the struggle for existence, in other words, by the principles of Darwin and Lamarck. Thus, H., instead of the 'supernatural history of the creation of Moses', constructs a 'natural history of creation', in which he links ideas about the development of the world and the development of the earth ('cosmogenesis' and 'geogenesis') with the origin of life on earth ('archigony') and the development of organisms over the centuries ('phylogeny'). In the question of the place of man in nature he considered the human spirit not in isolation, but in the general great stream of development, subjecting it to the same laws of causality as everything else. H. considered that the ideas of development must be introduced into teaching in secondary school, and he waged constant struggle against clerical, idealistic, and reactionary ideas, defending the 'free school in a free state'. Despite the great extremes and many errors which were committed by H., one cannot but recognize that his teaching was the first completed form of the new holistic worldview caused by completely new ideas about 'development' and the evolution of the organic world. Both his natural scientific and philosophical works were subjected to fierce criticism by his opponents. It is necessary to point out that these attacks were sometimes justified from the point of view of methodology, for example, when H. in his works depicted the early development of the human embryo egg, which no one had observed; his errors in the field of physics were sharply revealed by Khvol'son (1911). H. belongs to fundamental monographs on the simplest and coelenterates. The main works of Haeckel (most of them were reprinted many times): 'Die Radiolarien' (B. I-IV, B., 1862-1888); 'Beitrage zur Naturgeschichte der Hydromedusen' (Lpz., 1865); 'Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Syphonophoren' (Utrecht, 1869); 'Generelle Morphologie der Organismen' (B. I-II, B., 1866); 'Studien iiber Moneren u. andere Protisten' (Lpz., 1870); 'Uber die Entstehung u. den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts' (B., 1870); 'Das Protistenreich' (Lpz., 1878; Russian edition - SPb, 1881); 'Der Monismus, Glaubensbekenntnis eines Naturforschers' (Bonn, 1892; 15th ed., 1911); 'Die Weltratsel' (Bonn, 1899; Russian edition - M., 1922); 'Kunstformen der Natur' (Lpz., 1899-1904; Russian edition - SPb, 1902-05). Besides the above, the following works of H. were published in Russian: 'Bor'ba za evolyutsionnuyu ideyu' (SPb, 1909); 'Estestvennaya istoriya mirotvoreniya' (SPb, 1908-09); 'Kletochnye dushi i dushevnye-kletki' (Kiev, 1880); 'Lektsii po estestvoznaniyu i filosofii' (SPb, 1913); 'Mirovozzrenie Darvina i Lamarka' (SPb, 1909); 'Naturalist pod tropikami' (M.-L., 1925); 'Proiskhozhdenie cheloveka' (P., 1919); 'Uchenie ob organicheskikh formakh, osnovannoe na teorii prevrashcheniya vidov' (ed. by I. Mechnikov, SPb, 1869); 'Uchenie o razvitii organizmov' ('Priroda', 1876); 'O razvitii organizmov' (ibid., 1877).