Hekkeru to shinka no fantaji: Ichigenron, ekoroji, keitouju ヘッケルと進化の夢:一元論, エコロジー,系統樹 by Keiko Sato (review)

Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who is best known for his embryological principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, contributed not only to embryology but also to zoology, ecology, evolutionary theory and its application to human beings, and monistic philosophy and its social engagement. Keiko Sato’s Haeckel and the Fantasy of Evolution provides an overview of Haeckel’s scientific and philosophical endeavor as a whole, paying particular attention to his monistic philosophy and its nineteenth-century German context. It is a remarkable achievement for Japanese scholarship because, although there have been a couple of Japanese translations of Haeckel’s writings, few book-length historical treatments in Japanese have been provided.

Part 1 deals with sketching Haeckel’s biographical information and the contents of his early masterpiece in zoology, Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (General Morphology of Organisms, 1866), thereby describing his route to monism. Chapter 1 presents Haeckel’s early career in marine biology. In particular, Sato emphasizes the role played by the death of Anna Haeckel (née Sethe, 1835–64), Haeckel’s first wife. This tragedy not only influenced the contents of Generelle Morphologie, which adopted evolutionary theory as the basis of biology, but also made Haeckel renounce his Protestant faith and commit himself to a monistic philosophy. Among the many monisms in the history of philosophy and science, Haeckel’s took as real only one substance unifying body and soul, which was in turn governed by the sole law of substance.

Chapters 2 and 3 examine the general features of Generelle Morphologie, in which Haeckel aimed to reorganize morphology in terms of evolutionary theory and monism. Influenced by Baruch Spinoza and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Haeckel advocated Goethe’s conclusion, “Since matter can never exist and act without spirit, nor spirit without matter, matter is also capable of undergoing intensification, and spirit cannot be denied its attraction and repulsion” as expressing the fundamental idea of monism. While Goethe had made synchronic comparisons between archetypes and natural organisms, Haeckel proposed diachronic relations between ancient archetypes and current organisms to draw phylogenetic trees, where Darwin’s theory was adopted as a mechanical explanation of evolution. In fact, while Darwin himself hardly ever drew phylogenetic trees, Haeckel made so much of them that they became popular images of evolution. In his reconstruction of phylogeny, he appealed to a scientific methodology called philosophical empiricism, that is, a joint use of induction and deduction. Sato summarizes eight elementary points in Generelle Morphologie: (1) spontaneous generation, (2) a new classification, (3) biological fundamental forms, (4) morphological, physiological, and phylogenetic individuals, (5) recapitulation theory, (6) ecology, (7) human beings in nature, and (8) God in the monistic cosmology. Chapter 3 summarizes the entire contents of the book, which certainly helps one to understand what is a long, complex, and sometimes confusing work.

Part 2 discusses Haeckel’s scientific, philosophical, and social activities by topic. Sato begins by analyzing issues concerning Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, which he adopted as a methodological assumption for investigating the past, advocating it by means of the mechanism of terminal addition. It influenced different fields (such as anthropology), evoking considerable controversy (chapter 1). In reconstructing the phylogenetic tree, Haeckel found some missing links, an instance of which was the monera. Sato describes the debates on Bathybius haeckelii, which was claimed to be the archaeorganism by Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95). Haeckel also assumed the pithecanthrope hypothesis as the missing link between ape and lemur, which led to a dispute with Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) (chapter 2). Virchow and Haeckel also argued over the problem of whether evolutionary theory was to be taught in gymnasia. While Haeckel regarded evolution as a truth to be disseminated to the public by means of education, Virchow denied Haeckel’s suggestion because evolutionary theory was not a sufficiently established truth. The controversy contained a political dimension. In the German Empire, evolutionary theory was regarded as dangerous because it could result in...