Book | Chapter
(1987) Goethe and the sciences, Dordrecht, Springer.
The eternal laws of form
morphotypes and the conditions of existence in Goethe's biological thought
Timothy Lenoir
pp. 17-28
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.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-3761-1_2
Full citation:
Lenoir, T. (1987)., The eternal laws of form: morphotypes and the conditions of existence in Goethe's biological thought, in F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker & H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the sciences, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 17-28.
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