Haeckel in Biology Textbooks

Exorcising the spectre of Haeckel again

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I looked at 15 books in total. Where Haeckel's drawings appeared, that fact is noted. Where comment on Haeckel or his law is given, I have quoted the text faithfully, or in one case summarized, to give the flavor of the commentary.

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Of the 15 books, only 5 show Haeckel's drawings, two in whole, three in part.

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Of those 5, only one presents the biogenetic law uncritically, and that book is the 1937 H. C. Skinner, T. Smith, F. M. Wheat "Textbook in Educational Biology".

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The other 4 of these 5, along with another 7 that actually mention Haeckel, either dismiss Haeckel's laws as crude or incorrect, or else critique them in the sense that embryos resemble one another at early stages, but that adaptational pressures have obscured or removed most of the similarities.

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More details in the article.Edited by PaulK, : Corrected link

check your linkI had to use
this urlwhich links to this articleLooks like Randman needs to recapitulate ...Enjoy.

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Here's a working version of the link again: Since Randman can no longer post in this forum, I think it is incumbent upon me to be his representative. Obviously I'm unworthy, but I shall do my best. Ahem. Getting into character, give me moment...okay, here I go...

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This is just the same evolutionist whitewash we always see. Evolutionists indoctrinate children by including Haeckel's fraudulent diagrams in modern textbooks, even though they've been known to be fabrications for over a century. Randy Olson is a liar and a hack for claiming otherwise, as is demonstrated by this video: If you evolutionists weren't so caught up in your own illogic and intellectual dishonesty you would see how wrong you are, because the lies of Haeckel are still perpetuating the myth of evolution today.

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It's been released (see Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus), so I'm going to see if I can find 'Flock of Dodos' playing anywhere, it sounds like fun. Apparently it makes an important point. The dodos it's referring to are evolutionists, since they seem unable to effectively respond to the threat of creationism, winning legal points in court but badly losing the battle for public opinion, a point effectively made in this NPR interview (click on the "Listen" link on the webpage): Perhaps an equally appropriate term is ostriches, since there's a tendency on the part of many scientists to believe that they can hide their heads in the sand and creationism will just go away.--Percy

Sorry Percy,The movie played for a last time here across the street but I decided against going to it since I had heard on Friday that it was a year old. I assume it is the same one. I learned much more on Friday than I will ever get out of seeing "how" evos are not responding to the creationist challenge of ID. Allman had a question and answer session after the showing but I already had heard what he had to say( he was still on the “science” vs “not science” )issue. Neither Will nor David Wilson had read Kitcher's book so the "professionals" are still "behind" the internet curve. They were not ready to brand Genesis Creationism (Young Earth Creationism) as “dead” even though I gave the “book report.” As long as they are not reading first what their own put out there is no way that even the NYTimes is going to help them out. Having spent some time in Providence, RI this is not "across the street" either.

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NY TIMES Feb, 12, 2007

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I fully expected them to be behind Kitcher's message, especially as he was quick to get "Abusing Science" out earlier. But what I could read “between the lines” is that the heterodoxy of evolutionary research will continue to thwart attempts to circle the wagons on Biblical Creationism for my life-time at least. Perhaps the NY time article needs to be read in that sense? I had expected that post-Phil Johnson this would not be the case but it is and it continues for even any extension of Gould’s conceptual exaptations but I may have to explain that in a different thread than one on Haeckel. It is possible they are related if cell death is what is responsible for Haeckel continuing on where Gould’s “Darwin-Nietzche” quirky functional shift of post-Williams added generations’ advantage taking, but for myself after Friday I have left that purely biological thought in the dust. I think Gould would better try the word without the “aptation” 'ex' or no 'ex' for he only narrated the difference of Ptersaour and Bird wings not virus vs bacteria programmed cell death. If protobird wings are not prethermoregulatory causality but cell death structural constraints on somatic tissue formation my own position using “preadaptation” would be vindicatable easily. I have not done the leg work for this branch of thought yet. Regardless if Eugine Scott thinks that MY creationist thoughts are not assisting me in working out my difference of opinions in pure biogeography she would be wrong.

I think you need more invective, more rage. I don't know, it just kind of seemed, well, lame. oh, and you should probably throw in QM somewhere and how we refuse to accept it's implications in biology. just a though.

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"Have the Courage to Know!" --Immanuel Kant" . . .and some nights I just pray to the god of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll"--meatloafWant to help give back to the world community? Did you know that your computer can help? Join the newest TeamEvC Climate Modelling to help improve climate predictions for a better tomorrow.

Brad,The NY times story would make an excellent thread (in social issues I think) but it is not anywhere near the topic here.Stay away from it! If you post carelessly here again you'll have a few hours off.

In the link
Page not found | ScienceBlogs
one can find

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First, though, let's simplify the debate. The Discovery Institute position is that any text that shows Ernst Haeckel's ancient diagram of various embryos is guilty of fraudulently distorting the evidence for evolution. They have accused scientists of a conspiracy of lies, of using this known false diagram to buttress evolutionary theory.

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I hate it when I know something.If IT IS the Discovery Institute's "position" that *any* text showing Haeckel's diagram is "guilty", then I DO think that what I elliptically said stands on topic.The link went on at:

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I would agree, except that the textbooks Wells is damning in Icons often do exactly the same thing! Those that do mention Haeckel and his biogenetic law do so as an example of a historically significant error

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It seems the evolutionist SHOULD NOT AGREE!!There is "error" in science all the time it works.My feeling is that if that was the Institute's position then this "agreement" MUST be leveled against Ernst Mayr's use of Haeckel in his book "One Long Argument".Amazon.comSomehow because of the position of Weismann (motion to sex organs vs motion within the "nucleus") Mayr refused to rid his argument of Haeckel alltogether. So if the Discovery Institute wishes to excoricate a portrayal in "the movie" then I can see how this tactic may be directed deep within the establishment of biology and NOT be a simple window dressing as the NY Times article said. I brought the Times in to show that we have an inverted understanding of what counts for weapons in the cultural war. It is not peace. Phl Johnson made this clear to Will Provine. Will doubted it. If "the Flock" was supposed to galvanize evolutionists to do better Public Relations and the TIMES can do no better then I still maintain that it is evolutionists who need to be up on creation/evolution as much as may be a razor edge from being put on " a few hours off" on EvC. As long as they are not a few hours off the target they will never understand why something fleshy may NOT be so. I think the problem with Haeckel is about the biology of proto-wings. Perhaps I should have started with the science but it takes a lot longer to write from that direction.To resolve the issue of wings or "bellies" goes back to the "Gill arch" but in Gould's version of "a long argument" he relates this in the first narrative to bird wings being exaptations and then aptly suggests IN ONE PARAGRAPH that this goes back to GILLS (or bellies as Mayr had it in his "argument.") (and now perhaps to stay with time I should have started with Mayr's book, where do we have this time on the internet??) but I AM aware in the difference of Allman's presentation AGAINST Creationism that "internal pathways of structure" are not touched if one takes the functional shift that Gould remained with the difference of the words "adapatation" and aptation"" back to the bacterial origin of programmed cell death as written by the Frenchman Ameisan and can be THE WORD "preadaptation" in the tone of English spekaing biogeograpers.So short of me having my way (and this is not happening anytime soon) (which includes "creationism") The use of even the
heavy weight NYTIMES will not assist as a media battle.I was trying to say that no matter how much ID or antiID the movie had as long as Evos continue to BE the WING of the DODO, and this Friday's events here in Ithaca showed me THEY CONTINUE TO BE, they might as well be Haeckel himself even if THE BEST PAPER in the US backed them. They were not behind it and neither was the times.The argument has to go against Mayr, in my opinion. Where do we see that-- no where, instead we could get banned from EVC for a few hours- this would be wrong.If one reads Kant closely there are clear uses of the term "embryo" and that is probably why Discovery and every one else remains in this "error" of knowing too much. Haeckel was using asthetic taste rather than empricical restraints to judge and I think evolutonary theory would be better if it got rid of "artistic" references alltogether. This is not possible for the creationist nor the biogeographer who's view of distributions are mapped and remapped. The actual and possible are curious indeed. I am sorry if it seemed off topic as I tried to spatialize my position before fully adapting it to the topic. With the argument at the level of watching movies or videos rather than looking at words there is little one can do to bring the full argument. If evolutionists wanted to "respond" better than THE TIMES they need to "grow" biological thought so that denotation of Kant's words are OK in secular universities. My speaking after DS Wilson was recorded and "worked" and yet I take the words in a different understanding than Allman etc. and earlier I could be seen on local Channel 10 at this event. They will not do this if they NOW follow Scott's ideas cited at the end of the Times piece.Now if Paul has a problem with bringing Haeckel back in,yet again, does anyone have any genetic idea about a different kind of commotion that IS available by walking across the street but can not be captured by either Mayr's or Gould's views nor the better view of Provine over Wilson and others this week? I know not. It will not happen soon at least.I pray this is not a "time out" but I really needed to say this. I was not trying to be "sloppy" but I have no idea if people really try to read me for the science in my posts or not.

Not bad. Covers the essential points. Nothing like a canned ID straw-man argument. Funny that this is the ONLY thing they can critique "Flock of Dodos" on, and then only by misrepresenting the argument.Read the comments below the link to: Note one of them is from an editor of text books.LOLEdited by RAZD, : poyt

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Just for fun, I looked at two textbooks I had hanging about the house (Enger & Ross, Concepts in Biology, 1997, and Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 1998) - I didn't think any of the ecology or environment texts I've got would have any mention. Futuyma is the only one of the two that talks about Haeckel - albeit only in the context of Von Baer's Law - and a brief explanation of why Haeckel was wrong about ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. Quoting:

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"Haeckel's "law" is one of the most famous maxims in biology. But by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already clear that the law rather seldom holds." (Futuyma, pg 652)

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I guess Wells and the other evolution conspiracy theorists were right - Haeckel is still being mentioned in biology texts - even if in a negative context .

Wells and Haeckel's Embryos

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Haeckel's theory is encapsulated in his memorable aphorism, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," also called the biogenetic law. What that means is that development (ontogeny) repeats the evolutionary history (phylogeny) of the organism - that if we evolved from a fish that evolved into a reptile that evolved into us, our embryos physically echo that history, passing through a fish-like stage and then into a reptile-like stage.

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My Grandfather (Willard F. Stanley)(Stan in Z's lab )must have "believed" in "the law" if not merely the 'aphorism' as I repeatedly heard him state it as a child. In truth it was out of the "silence" in my own mind on trying to repeat the saying (in my brain) that I differentiated a thought of evolution made visual within an ability to describe reptiles and amphibians that this teacher of evolution from SUNY Fredonia could not do. I tried to imagine "'phylogeny' recapitulates ontogeny" instead. From this thought-process I was able to develop my own unique take on the history of biological thought that differs from those of Provine, Gould, Lewontin, and Mayr. In fact I find that I am technically yoked to the word "synthesis" as to the pair of terms 'synthesis-analysis' in this regard.As best I was able to trace where Willard may have gained his own understanding of the phrase, it seems that Charles Zeleny had circulated an internal essay in his lab that described a possible growth of biological thought by focusing on the young stages of development of all creatures. Both my Granddad AND Sewall Wright studied with Charles. The only difference between my view and “Stan’s” is that I am fully aware of the need to come first from cladistic rather than a phenetic or simple minded phylogenetic perspective. It is not clear to me that W. Francis Stanley thought that embryos “physically echo” all the past historical steps as his focus on biology was for a better economic future rather than a specific structural constant. His own position on creation and evolution was more closely associated with being able to socially “adapt” his life to day to day realities as he saw them in the period that birding went from the shot gun to the camera.The notion of

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What really scuttled the whole theory was that its foundation was removed, which makes the claim by Wells that biologists are trying to "resurrect recapitulation" rather peculiar

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is actually interpreted by me in a slightly disingenuous spectral color to this author as I easily see the project of historical interpretation of “the Modern Synthesis” by Gould and Provine (as a constriction or restriction from reading books and then a “hardening”) as CAUSING Stan’s view of evolution (and also failure to graduate me a student of such) to be ”foundationally removed’ and the cross purposes to which the structural notion of developmental constraints are is being led by different biologists seems to NOT discount the “resurrection” oddly enough however “development” then becomes weirdly and uselessly ”polyvocal.’It is now obvious to me that Gould’s attempt to enlist “Nietchze” is probably as to keep the likes of his training of Wise at bay but to say so would require me to elaborate on all of the points brought down in this article. The notion of “faking” has to be understood as possible EVEN when there is calculus of smooth differentials connecting data points. Gould was very crafty to say that life is NOT fractal. He has a biological point here but if the biologist had to discuss the phlyogenetic continuum at the level that mathematicians discuss the equipollence of the number line then this reservation would be obviated by the technical terms being discussed. I have never seen this discussion and instead I either find disagreements creation/evolution wise or else particular attempts at placing biology in an historical context without being able to show the content I keep on trying to be a discontinuous (phenetic vs cladogenic when not anagenetic) student of.Edited by Brad McFall, : letter e not o

This is a reply to Beretta's Message 46 in thread Icons of Evolution. You're still getting this wrong, because the exact opposite is the case. The earlier the embryonic stage, the more similar it is to other species.Haeckel made two mistakes. The first was in thinking that the course of embrylogical development retraces a species evolutionary history. This is true in a general sense, as many have been pointing out to you in the other thread, but not to the extent Haeckel thought. Embryos do not pass through the adult stages of organisms from their evolutionary history.Haeckel's other mistake was in fudging his drawings to make it seem that embrylogical development retraced evolutionary history more closely than is actually the case. I don't think Haeckel was desperate about Darwin's theory, he had no personal stake in it himself, but his embryological discoveries were in reality very supportive of evolutionary theory. For instance, during embryological development in mammals, what starts out as bones in the jaw and actually do become part of the jaw in fish and reptiles migrate to becomes bones of the inner ear. This is because fish and reptiles are the evolutionary ancestors of mammals. I'm curious where you're drawing this information from. How about you tell us why you keep repeating things that are not true. If you ask anyone who accepts evolution to list the reasons why they do, Haeckel will not be among them. In fact, many accepting evolution probably know very little about Haeckel unless they've gotten involved in discussions with creationists, the only group expressing any intense interest in Haeckel in more than a century.--Percy

Man, you certainly can't read.
Ad hominems are not always invalid logical arguments. We're not dealing with formal logic here, but evidence. And the credibility of evidence depends upon the credibility of the person. So if you are a shady person, your evidence is going to be taken at a much lower face value than someone else. Wells, Meyer, and the whole clan are shady people. They have consistently gotten the theory of evolution wrong or are simply out to attack it without following the rules of science (prefering to publish their "work" in mass-publication books, getting nebulous, incomplete, and wrong 'theories' into the classroom, etc).Now then, if I had used an ad hominem towards you, insulted you or whatnot, then you might have a point. Further, I did it as a way to try and get you to look at other places aside from creationist wankery, as in, maybe something from real research centers.Recapitulation theory has been dead since the beginning of the 1900s, disproved by scientists. Every textbook I've come across says this. They don't use the pictures to show that recapitulationis right, either.Further, his 'evidence' was to try and support Lamarckianism, a different, falsified view of evolution. It works like this: If I work at getting strong, my offspring will be naturally strong. If giraffe stretches his neck to eat that highest leaf and gets a longer neck, she will pass that on. It's called "soft inheritance" and ever since Mendel and Darwin it's been discredited (though various people have attempted to revise it, most notably the Soviet Union in agriculture).Now then, since you're the one making the claim that Darwin was impressed with Haeckel's recapitulation theory, why don't you find some evidence to back it up?Fraudulent nonsense does not exist for very long in real science, and while it may be used by interested parties for their own aims (such as convincing the world that man originated in England of all places), the hoaxes are cut down very quickly and mentioned in passing.

This shows the differences between mainstream science and creation "science."While nonsense does not last very long in real science, some of the most outlandish nonsense persists in creation "science" because it supports a religious position. As creation "science" is not based on evidence, if something supports one's position there is no compelling reason to discard it--it can't be falsified by the evidence, no matter how compelling!That's why we see the same old worn out talking points used over and over by creationists. They are supported by belief and under the rules of creation "science" they can't be disproved by evidence.And that's why they keep picking on Haeckel.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Just an off topic thought... anyone know if creos and IDists deny the dodos ever existed?Added by edit.To bring my post somewhat on topic, anyone know why the creos and IDists continue to lie about Haeckel being in textbooks? I could have sworn one of god's 10 commandments forbid people from bearing false witness. What gives?Edited by Taz, : No reason given.