Six schools of thought can be detected in the development of evolutionary theory in German paleontology between 1859 and World War II. Most paleontologists were hardly affected in their research by Darwin's Origin of Species. The traditionalists accepted evolution within lower taxa but not for organisms in general. They also rejected Darwin's theory of selection. The early Darwinians accepted Darwin's theory of transmutation and theory of selection as axioms and applied them fruitfully to the fossil record, thereby laying the foundation (...) for the new research areas of phylogeny and paleo-biology. The enthusiasm of the early Darwinians faded when the fossil record and the problems of its interpretion became more widely known. The pluralists of the turn of the century invented and adopted a wealth of hypothetical mechanisms in order to explain individual features of the fossil record. They failed, however, to provide one coherent theory. Dissatisfaction with this situation led to adoption of a dogmatic neo-Lamarckism, which was regarded as a coherent theory providing a fruitful research program. The rejection of the Lamarckian mechanism early in this century left paleontologists with only one kind of evolutionary mechanism: inner causes.Like many neo-Lamarckians several orthogeneticists were highly interested in adaptation and did not see any contradiction between the inner causes of evolution and adaptation. The dominance of stratigraphical research programs in paleontology led in the 1930s and 1940s to a decrease in interest in adaptation. Stratigraphical records of taxa were accepted as meaningful in the context of evolutionary theory. Orthogenesis and the new concepts of saltation and cyclicism were amalgamated into one theory : typostrophism. This theory dominated German paleontology for decades after the war and only recently has the synthetic theory been seriously considered.Evolution was never very intensively discussed in German paleontology in the hundred years after Darwin's book. Most information used here comes from textbooks or from papers given on special occasions. It has been impossible to summarize how members of one school defended their views or discussed the ideas of competing schools. (shrink)

Gegenüber den Ansichten vonJ. Gross , der den Mendelismus für die Stütze der selektionsdarwinistischen Evolutionserklärung halten will, stellt der Verfasser die Argumente zusammen, die beweisen können, dass, im- Grunde genommen, beide Lehren identifiziert sein sollten, da sie mit gleichem Begriffe der allerkleinsten, von einander unabhängigen, hauptsächlich äusserlichen, unbestimmten und meistens nur geringere Lebensbedeutung zeigenden Varianten operieren, deren Ursachen, nachDarwin, öfters unbekannt, das Entstehen sogar zufällig bleiben, d.h. dass sie vollständig den Regeln der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung unterworfen sein müssen, was-im Mendelismus – gleichfalls (...) in dem freien Zusammentreffen und dem Kombinieren der mendelnden Merkmale sein Ausdruck findet, was inbezug auf die sich abspielenden Interaktionen der Genallele, und zwar in Folgte der Anteilnahme von immer zwei Elternseiten, mit allgemeiner Gleichung desNewtonschen Binoms ausgedruckt werden kann, wie das der Verfasser im Jahre 1938 entwickelte.Der alte Vorwurf somit, der seit langem dem Darwinismus gemacht wurde, es habe eine allzugrosse Bedeutung den zufälligen Variationen beigemessen, sollte, im Grunde genommen, von dem Standpunkte der Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie für ein Argument zugunsten ebengleich des Darwinismus, als des Mendelismus angeführt werden. Umso mehr, wenn es gelingen könnte die Ansicht vonTh. H. Morgan zu bestätigen, dass die Entwickelung eines jeden beliebigen Merkmals, bloss kraft seines Anwachsens, die Chancen für die weitere Entwickelung desselben in der eingenom-. menen Richtung vergrössert.Zugleich wird jedoch ein deutlicher Vorbehalt gemacht, dass die erschlossene Identifizierung einstweilen nur die microevolutiven Vorgänge betreffen könnte, keineswegs aber die natürliche Zuchtwahllehre, die vor allem die Dynamik der Populationsänderungen behandelt.En s'opposant aux points de vue exprimés parJ. Gross que la doctrine mendélienne aurait pu être considérée comme le support de celle du sélectionisme darwinien, l'auteur avance des preuves que tous les deux devraient au fond s'identifier, parce qu'elles basent leurs déductions sur les variantes minimes, en majeure partie concernant les traits extérieurs, très souvent d'une importance vitale insignifiante, en même temps peu définies et réciproquement indépendantes, l'origine desquelles, selonDarwin, reste d'ordinaire inconnue, l'apparition même étant imprévue et fortuite, ce qui signifie, qu'elles doivent être assujetties complètement aux règles, requisitions et conséquences de la théorie de probabilité, tandis que dans le mendélisme la même chose se manifeste également dans les associations en majeure partie libres et indépendantes des caractères semblables, qui représentent les interactions combinatoires géniques entre les paires allélomorphiques, qui grâce à la participation de pas plus que deux partenaires parentals s'expriment dans une équation générale du binôme newtonien .De cette manière, l'objection faite jadis contre la doctrine darwinienne d'avoir assigné un poids trop grand au hasard des variations indéfinies, doit être au fond considérée, au point de vue de la théorie de probabilité, plutôt comme l'argument de l'appui en faveur de cette doctrine, aussi bien naturellement que du mendélisme même, lui aussi étant une expression de cette théorie. Cela d'autant plus s'il était possible de confirmer les idées deTh. H. Morgan , selon lequel le développement d'un trait quelconque, une fois commencé, acquiert, par la seule apparition, plus de chances pour son progrès consécutif dans le même endroit.Néanmoins, toute réserve est prise par l'auteur au fait, que cette identification déduite ne saurait être attribuée pour le moment du moins, qu'aux phénomènes microévolutifs et qu'elle ne pourrait jamais être appliquée à la théorie de la sélection naturelle, cette denière concernant avant tout les facteurs impliqués dans la dynamique des changements quantitatifs des populations. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Non‐Darwinian Revolution 1870–1880: The Struggle for Existence and Cultural Evolution 1880–1882: Nietzsche contra Spencer 1883–1888: The Will to Power as Bildungstrieb Conclusion.

Edvard August Vainio was a world-renowned Finnish lichenologist. In Finland, however, he was a controversial person due to his strong pro-Finnish political views. Equally disputed was his opinion that systematics should be based on evolutionary theory and phylogenetic thinking. Vainio was familiar with the ideas of the early German phylogeneticists—especially those of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli – and, applying them, aimed to create an exact method for building a natural classification of lichens already at the end of the nineteenth century. (...) In this respect, Vainio was a true pioneer, as no actual phylogenetic method had yet been developed. In the general spirit of the time, Vainio focused on finding the ancestors of species and other taxa by comparing primitive and derived features of homologous characters. However, Vainio already understood the concept of sister groups in 1880, the identification of which is the basis of all modern phylogenetic research. Nevertheless, the distinctive method developed by Vainio was not so much focused on the construction of a phylogenetic tree, but on revealing the origin of species through the differentiation and fixation of their polymorphic variation. Indeed, Vainio’s species concept is surprisingly similar to the phylogenetic species concepts presented a hundred years later. Although in many ways progressive, Vainio’s views did not influence the development of phylogenetics more widely, but his discussions are nevertheless a valuable source to understanding the early development of phylogenetic theory. (shrink)

A spiral running along the surface of a cone standing on top is proposed as a model for evolution, the progress of which is considered as composed of a linear progression following the direction of time and representing the linear increase in the number of taxa, while a circular component stands for the ever recurring functional types of organisms.

After a short review of the historical development of the problem of cytoplasmic inheritance, the principles for the proof of cytoplasmic inheritance were discussed. At present the proof can be based on the maternal transmission of plasmagenes, on the missing of mendelian segregation and on the possibility of a segregation during ontogenetic development. In the following the most important possibilities for errors and their refutation onEpilobium were discussed: elimination of genotypes , abnormal cytology , maternal aftereffects , predetermination , nuclear (...) produced plasmagenes and transmission of parasites or symbionts as virus . At the end the principles for the distinction between different cytoplasmic constituents were discussed. (shrink)