The eternal laws of form

morphotypes and the conditions of existence in Goethe's biological thought

Timothy Lenoir

pp. 17-28

in: Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker, Harvey Wheeler (eds), Goethe and the sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

In 1802 Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus announced the birth of a new scientific discipline. He called it "biology," the science whose aim was to determine the conditions and laws under which the different forms of life exist and their causes. Treviranus was not alone in forging the outlines of the new science of life. He was in fact consciously synthesizing discussions that had been going on for at least a decade in Germany involving such persons as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer, Heinrich Friedrich Link, and the von Humboldt brothers (Lenoir, 1981). But one of the most distinguished co-workers in this enterprise was the man whose scientific work we are celebrating in this volume; namely, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Cited authors

Goethe Johann Wolfgang