Idealistic morphology

Prominent German botanist professor Wilhelm Troll wrote in his two-volumes text-book (600 pages) that all seed-plants are to be considered as variation of ideal "Urpflanze" which he schematically presented in the first pages. Reading first 100 pages of his text-book I would say I agree. I am afraid that none of his antidarwinian books have ever been translated into English. I don't know if ever some botanist challenged his work.Praktische Einfhrung in die Pflanzenmorphologie. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1957

I don't see where the anti-darwinian bit comes in. How is this any more anti-darwinian than saying that all vertebrates can be considered a variation of an ideal vertebrate 'bauplan'? Common descent would lead us to expect that groups descended from common ancestral populations would present variations, of highly varying degree, upon the form of that ancestor.TTFN,WK

I am afraid Troll was no way a darwinist:

quote:

---

The peculiarity of living beings is determined by ””thoughts and ideas of a creative power which penetrates from the ideal world [Welthintergrunde] into nature, which gives new characteristics to matter and creates the type-like basic organic forms’’7 (Troll, 1937, VI).

---

More at "The history of essentialism vs. Ernst Mayr’s ””Essentialism
Story’’: A case study of German idealistic morphology" herehttp://www.evolutionsbiologen.de/levit-tib.pdf

I have to say Martin you certainly bring some interesting material to the debate. This is a very interesting paper. It seems to agree with my position that 'typology', i.e. the existence of an ideal bauplan or ur-Pflanze, does not need to conflict with neo-darwinian theory.The conflict, as the paper suggests, come from associated ideas such as essentialism or creationism, and these ideas may predispose their proponents to favour typology and see it as conflicting with modern evolutionary theory.Troll's position seems to be based upon some massive assumptions, i.e. 'an organism has a certain independence in relation to the causal events and controls them more than it itself is controlled’. There seems to be pretty much no evidence for this being the case unless this control is thought of simply as the genetic 'program' of development.TTFN,WK

Many scientists of the so-called German school opposed darwinism. Their work 1890-1945 are neglected by the neodarwinian school but it still exist. There were many scientific journals written in German in those years across the Europe. Fortunatelly some of them - even the whole volumes - have appeared on inet recently and are available for download now. Many interesting articles for those who can read German and are interested in non-darwinian ideas about evolution of the forgotten (and neglected) days :Internet Archive Search: Naturwissenschaftliche WochenschriftEdited by MartinV, : No reason given.