The German paleontologist H. G. Bronn is best remembered for his 1860 translation and critique of Darwin's Origin of Species, and for supposedly twisting Darwinian evolution into conformity with German idealistic morphology. This analysis of Bronn's writings shows, however, that far from being mired in an outmoded idealism that confined organic change to predetermined developmental pathways, Bronn had worked throughout the 1840s and 1850s on a new, historical approach to life. He had been moving from the study of plant and (...) animal forms in the abstract towards placing them into geological and biogeographical context, analyzing patterns of progress and adaptation, explaining species diversity and individual variation, and applying biological insights to practical problems such as artificial breeding. Even though Bronn never fully accepted the idea of species transformation, he saw Darwin's theory as a bold new move toward his own goal of establishing a comprehensive, historical science of life, and he presented it as such in his translation and commentary. Thus Darwin's ideas gained a quick and generally favorable hearing in Germany not because of their easy assimilability into an older tradition, but because of their appeal to the innovative Bronn. (shrink)

The Red Queen hypothesis, or the ability organisms have to control and regulate the available trophic energy, is a recently proposed parameter for measuring fitness. Firstly, this hypothesis is analysed in terms of its heuristic power. Secondly, the claimed causal dependence between this parameter and a, still controversial, law of constant extinction is judged to be unjustified, however reasonable such a claim appears to be. Finally, the ubiquity of competition in nature which is seemingly required by the Red Queen and (...) supposedly realized at the expense of a mutualistic alternative, is deemed to be a questionable assumption. (shrink)

Richard Owen has been condemned by Darwinians as an anti-evolutionist and an essentialist. In recent years he has been the object of a revisionist analysis intended to uncover evolutionary elements in his scientific enterprise. In this paper I will examine Owen's evolutionary hypothesis and its connections with von Baer's idea of divergent development. To give appropriate importance to Owen's evolutionism is the first condition to develop an up-to-date understanding of his scientific enterprise, that is to disentagle Owen's contribution to the (...) modernization of typology and morphology. I will argue that Owen's Platonic essentialism is rhetorical and incongruous. On the contrary, an interpretation of the archetype based on Aristotle's biological works makes possible a new conception of type, based on a homeostatic mechanism of stability. The renewal of morphology hinges on homological correspondences and a homeostatic process is also the origin of serial and special homology. I will argue that special homology shows an evolutionary orientation insofar as it is a typically inter-specific character while serial homology is determined through an elementary usage of the categories of developmental morphology. (shrink)

La biologie travaille sur des particuliers. De par son historicité, chaque entité biologique est unique. Nous devons pourtant les regrouper pour parvenir à en parler de manière générale. Nos classifications sont destinées à communiquer nos concepts, et ce faisant elles reflètent une intention. Comme nous sommes en science, nous préférons les procédures de regroupement aux procédures de division, lesquelles finissent toujours par isoler les particuliers. En systématique, science des classifications, la géométrie de nos concepts est celle d’une hiérarchie par emboîtement, (...) du plus général au plus particulier, plutôt qu’une hiérarchie par empilement, parce que les premières pratiquent l’inclusion tandis que les secondes pratiquent l’inclusion et l’exclusion. Les êtres biologiques sont traversés par une foule de ressemblances différentes, et la ressemblance globale, à vouloir les saisir toutes, n’en saisit rigoureusement aucune. Elle ne se distingue pas de la différence globale. Or, nous voulons travailler sur les partages, pas sur les différences, lesquelles finissent par isoler les entités. Ces partages, ce sont des attributs communs ou des propriétés partagées : c’est la ressemblance vue en mosaïque. Mais quel type de ressemblance est pris en compte? La ressemblance topologique est prioritaire, vient ensuite la ressemblance de forme et celle du processus de genèse. La ressemblance de fonction est trop trompeuse pour être prise en compte. Mais trompeuse au regard de quel but? Nous classons pour parler des origines de ce qui existe. La classification moderne des êtres vivants reflète leur généalogie passée, ou du moins ce que nous pouvons en reconstruire indirectement. Et pour cela, la ressemblance topologique est la plus efficace. (shrink)