Lorenz Oken
Encyclopedia
Lorenz Oken was a German
naturalist
.
Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss in Bohlsbach (now part of Offenburg
) in Baden
and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg
and Würzburg
. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer), and shortened his name to Oken. As Lorenz Oken, he published a small work entitled Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, der Theorie der Sinne, mit der darauf gegründeten Classification der Thiere (1802). This was the first of a series of works which established him as the leader of the movement of "Naturphilosophie
" in Germany.
In it he extended to physical science the philosophical principles which Immanuel Kant
had applied to epistemology and morality. Oken had been preceded in this by Gottlieb Fichte, who, acknowledging that Kant had discovered the materials for a universal science, declared that all that was needed was a systematic coordination of these materials. Fichte undertook this task in his "Doctrine of Science" (Wissenschaftslehre), whose aim was to construct all knowledge by a priori
means. This attempt, which was merely sketched out by Fichte, was further elaborated by the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
. Oken built on Schelling's work, producing a synthesis of what he held Schelling to have achieved.
Oken produced the 7 volume series "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte für alle Stände", with engravings by Johann Conrad Susemihl
, and published in Stuttgart by Hoffman between 1839-184l.
In 1805 Oken made a further advance in the application of the a priori principle, in a book on generation (Die Zeugung), in which he maintained that "all organic beings originate from and consist of vesicles or cells. These vesicles, when singly detached and regarded in their original process of production, are the infusorial mass or protoplasma (Urschleim) whence all larger organisms fashion themselves or are evolved. Their production is therefore nothing else than a regular agglomeration of Infusoria--not, of course, of species already elaborated or perfect, but of mucous vesicles or points in general, which first form themselves by their union or combination into particular species."
A year after the production of this treatise, Oken developed his system one stage further, and in a volume published in 1806, written with the assistance of Dietrich Georg von Kieser
(1779-1862), entitled Beiträge zur vergleichenden Zoologie, Anatomie, und Physiologie, he demonstrated that the intestines originate from the umbilical vesicle, and that this corresponds to the vitelius or yolk-bag. Caspar Friedrich Wolff
had previously claimed to demonstrate this fact in the chick (Theoria Generationis, 1774), but he did not see its application as evidence of a general law. Oken showed the importance of the discovery as an illustration of his system. In the same work Oken described and recalled attention to the corpora Wolffiana, or "primordial kidneys."
, he stumbled on the blanched skull of a deer, picked up the partially dislocated bones, and contemplated them for a while, when it suddenly occurred to him, "It is a vertebral column!" At a meeting of the German naturalists held at Jena some years afterwards, Professor Kieser gave an account of Oken's discovery in the presence of the grand duke, which is printed in the Tageblatt, or "proceedings,” of that meeting. The professor stated that Oken told him of his discovery when journeying in 1806 to the island of Wangerooge
. On their return to Göttingen Oken explained his ideas by reference to the skull of a turtle
in Kieser's collection, which he disarticulated for that purpose. Kieser displayed the skull, its bones marked in Oken's handwriting.
Oken's lectures at Jena were wide-ranging, and were highly regarded at the time. The subjects included natural philosophy, general natural history, zoology
, comparative anatomy, the physiology
of man, of animals and of plants. The spirit with which he grappled with the vast scope of science is characteristically illustrated in his essay Ueber das Universum als Fortsetzung des Sinnensystems, 1808. In this work he lays it down that "organism is none other than a combination of all the universe's activities within a single individual body." This doctrine led him to the conviction that "world and organism are one in kind, and do not stand merely in harmony with each other." In the same year he published his Erste Ideen zur Theorie des Lichts, &c., in which he advanced the proposition that "light could be nothing but a polar tension of the ether, evoked by a central body in antagonism with the planets, and heat was none other than a motion of this ether"--a sort of vague anticipation of the doctrine of the "correlation of physical forces."
In 1809 Oken extended his system to the mineral world, arranging the ores, not according to the metals, but agreeably to their combinations with oxygen, acids and sulphur. In 1810 he summed up his views on organic and inorganic nature into one compendious system. In the first edition of the Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie, which appeared in that and the following years, he sought to bring his different doctrines into mutual connection, and to "show that the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms are not to be arranged arbitrarily in accordance with single and isolated characters, but to be based upon the cardinal organs or anatomical systems, from which a firmly established number of classes would necessarily be evolved; that each class, moreover, takes its starting-point from below, and consequently that all of them pass parallel to each other"; and that, "as in chemistry, where the combinations follow a definite numerical law, so also in anatomy the organs, in physiology the functions, and in natural history the classes, families, and even genera of minerals, plants, and animals present a similar arithmetical ratio." The Lehrbuch procured for Oken the title of Hofrath, or court-councillor, and in 1812 he was appointed ordinary professor of the natural sciences.
was prohibited. Oken made arrangements for its issue at Rudolstadt
, and this continued uninterruptedly until the year 1848.
In 1822 Oken promulgated in Isis the first idea of the annual general meetings of the German naturalists and medical practitioners, which happy idea was realized in the following year, when the first meeting was held at Leipzig. The British Association for the Advancement of Science was at the outset avowedly organized after the German or Okenian model. In 1828 Oken resumed his original humble duties as privatdocent in the newly-established university of Munich, and soon afterwards he was appointed ordinary professor in the same university. In 1832, on the proposal by the Bavarian government to transfer him to a professorship in a provincial university of the state, he resigned his appointments and left the kingdom. He was appointed in 1833 to the professorship of natural history in the then recently-established university of Zürich
. There he continued to reside, fulfilling his professional duties and promoting the progress of his favourite sciences, until his death.
Homological
All of Oken's writings are deductive illustrations of an assumed principle, which, with other philosophers of the transcendental school, he deemed equal to the explanation of all the mysteries of nature. According to him, the head was a repetition of the trunk--a kind of second trunk, with its limbs and other appendages; this sum of his observations and comparisons--few of which he ever gave in detail--ought always to be borne in mind in comparing the share taken by Oken in homological
anatomy with the progress made by other cultivators of that philosophical branch of the science. The idea of the analogy between the skull, or parts of the skull, and the vertebral column had been previously propounded and ventilated in their lectures by Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
and Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer
, and in the writings of Johann Peter Frank
. By Oken it was applied chiefly in illustration of the mystical system of Schelling--the "all-in-all" and "all-in-every-part." From the earliest to the latest of Oken's writings on the subject, "the head is a repetition of the whole trunk with all its systems: the brain is the spinal cord; the cranium is the vertebral column; the mouth is intestine and abdomen; the nose is the lungs and thorax; the jaws are the limbs; and the teeth the claws or nails." Johann Baptist von Spix
, in his folio Cephalogenesis (1818), richly illustrated comparative craniology, but presented the facts under the same transcendental guise; and Georges Cuvier
availed himself of the extravagances of these disciples of Schelling to cast ridicule on the whole inquiry into those higher relations of parts to the archetype which Sir Richard Owen
called "general homologies."
The vertebral theory of the skull had practically disappeared from anatomical science when the labours of Cuvier drew to their close. In Owen's Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton the idea was not only revived but worked out for the first time inductively, and the theory rightly stated, as follows: "The head is not a virtual equivalent of the trunk, but is only a portion, i.e. certain modified segments, of the whole body. The jaws are the 'haeinal arches' of the first two segments; they are not limbs of the head" (p. 176).
Vaguely and strangely, however, as Oken had blended the idea with his a priori conception of the nature of the head, the chance of appropriating it seems to have overcome the moral sense of Goethe--unless indeed the poet deceived himself. Comparative osteology had early attracted Goethe's attention. In 1786 he published at Jena his essay Ueber den Zwischenkieferknochen des Menschen und der Thiere, showing that the intermaxillary bone existed in man as well as in brutes. But not a word in this essay gives the remotest hint of his having then possessed the idea of the vertebral analogies of the skull. In 1820, in his Morphologie, he first publicly stated that thirty years before the date of that publication he had discovered the secret relationship between the vertebrae and the bones of the head, and that he had always continued to meditate on this subject. The circumstances under which the poet, in 1820, narrates having become inspired with the original idea are suspiciously analogous to those described by Oken in 1807, as producing the same effect on his mind. A bleached skull is accidentally discovered in both instances: in Oken's it was that of a deer in the Harz forest; in Goethe's it was that of a sheep picked up on the shores of the Lido, at Venice
.
It may be assumed that Oken when a Privatdozent at Göttingen in 1806 knew nothing of this unpublished idea or discovery of Goethe, and that Goethe first became aware that Oken had the idea of the vertebral relations of the skull when he listened to the introductory discourse in which the young professor, invited by the poet to Jena, selected this very idea for its subject. It is incredible that Oken, had he adopted the idea from Goethe, or been aware of an anticipation by him, should have omitted to acknowledge the source--should not rather have eagerly embraced so appropriate an opportunity of doing graceful homage to the originality and genius of his patron.
In 1832, Oken was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
.
Offenburg
Offenburg is a city located in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With about 60,000 inhabitants, it is the largest city and the capital of the Ortenaukreis.Offenburg also houses University of Applied Sciences Offenburg...
) in Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
and Würzburg
University of Würzburg
The University of Würzburg is a university in Würzburg, Germany, founded in 1402. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group.-Name:...
. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer), and shortened his name to Oken. As Lorenz Oken, he published a small work entitled Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, der Theorie der Sinne, mit der darauf gegründeten Classification der Thiere (1802). This was the first of a series of works which established him as the leader of the movement of "Naturphilosophie
Naturphilosophie
Naturphilosophie is a term used in English-language philosophy to identify a current in the philosophical tradition of German idealism, as applied to the study of Nature in the earlier 19th century...
" in Germany.
In it he extended to physical science the philosophical principles which Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
had applied to epistemology and morality. Oken had been preceded in this by Gottlieb Fichte, who, acknowledging that Kant had discovered the materials for a universal science, declared that all that was needed was a systematic coordination of these materials. Fichte undertook this task in his "Doctrine of Science" (Wissenschaftslehre), whose aim was to construct all knowledge by a priori
A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)
The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments...
means. This attempt, which was merely sketched out by Fichte, was further elaborated by the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
. Oken built on Schelling's work, producing a synthesis of what he held Schelling to have achieved.
Oken produced the 7 volume series "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte für alle Stände", with engravings by Johann Conrad Susemihl
Johann Conrad Susemihl
Johann Conrad Susemihl , was a German copperplate engraver and artist noted for his images of natural history, landscapes and architecture....
, and published in Stuttgart by Hoffman between 1839-184l.
New system of animal classification
In the Grundriss der Naturphilosophie of 1802 Oken sketched the outlines of the scheme he afterwards devoted himself to perfecting. The position advanced in that work, to which he continued to adhere, is that "the animal classes are virtually nothing else than a representation of the sense-organs, and that they must be arranged in accordance with them." In accordance with this idea, Oken contended that there are only five animal classes:- Dermatozoa, or invertebrates
- Glossozoa, or fish, those animals in which a true tongue makes, for the first time, its appearance
- Rhinozoa, or reptiles, in which the nose opens for the first time into the mouth and inhales air
- Otozoa, or birds, in which the ear for the first time opens externally
- Ophthalmozoa, or mammals, in which all the organs of sense are present and complete, the eyes being movable and covered with lids.
In 1805 Oken made a further advance in the application of the a priori principle, in a book on generation (Die Zeugung), in which he maintained that "all organic beings originate from and consist of vesicles or cells. These vesicles, when singly detached and regarded in their original process of production, are the infusorial mass or protoplasma (Urschleim) whence all larger organisms fashion themselves or are evolved. Their production is therefore nothing else than a regular agglomeration of Infusoria--not, of course, of species already elaborated or perfect, but of mucous vesicles or points in general, which first form themselves by their union or combination into particular species."
A year after the production of this treatise, Oken developed his system one stage further, and in a volume published in 1806, written with the assistance of Dietrich Georg von Kieser
Dietrich Georg von Kieser
Dietrich Georg von Kieser was a German physician born in Harburg. He studied medicine at the Universities of Würzburg and Göttingen, receiving his doctorate from the latter institution in 1804. For most of his career he was a professor at the University of Jena, where from 1824 to 1862 he served...
(1779-1862), entitled Beiträge zur vergleichenden Zoologie, Anatomie, und Physiologie, he demonstrated that the intestines originate from the umbilical vesicle, and that this corresponds to the vitelius or yolk-bag. Caspar Friedrich Wolff
Caspar Friedrich Wolff
Caspar Friedrich Wolff was a German physiologist and one of the founders of embryology.-Life:Wolff was born in Berlin, Brandenburg. In 1230 he graduated as an M.D...
had previously claimed to demonstrate this fact in the chick (Theoria Generationis, 1774), but he did not see its application as evidence of a general law. Oken showed the importance of the discovery as an illustration of his system. In the same work Oken described and recalled attention to the corpora Wolffiana, or "primordial kidneys."
University of Jena
The reputation of the young Privatdozent of Göttingen had reached the ear of Goethe, and in 1807 Oken was invited to fill the office of Extraordinary Professor of the Medical Sciences at the University of Jena. He selected for the subject of his inaugural discourse his ideas on the "Signification of the Bones of the Skull," based on a discovery of the previous year. This lecture was delivered in the presence of Goethe, as privy councillor and rector of the university, and was published in the same year, with the title, Ueber die Bedeutung der Schädelknochen. With regard to the origin of the idea, Oken narrates in his Isis that, walking one autumn day in 1806 in the Harz forestHarz National Park
The Harz National Park is a nature reserve in the German federal states of Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. It comprises large portions of the western Harz mountain range, extending from Herzberg and Bad Lauterberg at the southern edge to Bad Harzburg and Ilsenburg on the northern slopes...
, he stumbled on the blanched skull of a deer, picked up the partially dislocated bones, and contemplated them for a while, when it suddenly occurred to him, "It is a vertebral column!" At a meeting of the German naturalists held at Jena some years afterwards, Professor Kieser gave an account of Oken's discovery in the presence of the grand duke, which is printed in the Tageblatt, or "proceedings,” of that meeting. The professor stated that Oken told him of his discovery when journeying in 1806 to the island of Wangerooge
Wangerooge
Wangerooge is one of the 32 Frisian Islands in the North Sea located close to the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. It is also a municipality in the district of Friesland in Lower Saxony in Germany.Wangerooge is one of the East Frisian Islands...
. On their return to Göttingen Oken explained his ideas by reference to the skull of a turtle
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...
in Kieser's collection, which he disarticulated for that purpose. Kieser displayed the skull, its bones marked in Oken's handwriting.
Oken's lectures at Jena were wide-ranging, and were highly regarded at the time. The subjects included natural philosophy, general natural history, zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, comparative anatomy, the physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
of man, of animals and of plants. The spirit with which he grappled with the vast scope of science is characteristically illustrated in his essay Ueber das Universum als Fortsetzung des Sinnensystems, 1808. In this work he lays it down that "organism is none other than a combination of all the universe's activities within a single individual body." This doctrine led him to the conviction that "world and organism are one in kind, and do not stand merely in harmony with each other." In the same year he published his Erste Ideen zur Theorie des Lichts, &c., in which he advanced the proposition that "light could be nothing but a polar tension of the ether, evoked by a central body in antagonism with the planets, and heat was none other than a motion of this ether"--a sort of vague anticipation of the doctrine of the "correlation of physical forces."
In 1809 Oken extended his system to the mineral world, arranging the ores, not according to the metals, but agreeably to their combinations with oxygen, acids and sulphur. In 1810 he summed up his views on organic and inorganic nature into one compendious system. In the first edition of the Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie, which appeared in that and the following years, he sought to bring his different doctrines into mutual connection, and to "show that the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms are not to be arranged arbitrarily in accordance with single and isolated characters, but to be based upon the cardinal organs or anatomical systems, from which a firmly established number of classes would necessarily be evolved; that each class, moreover, takes its starting-point from below, and consequently that all of them pass parallel to each other"; and that, "as in chemistry, where the combinations follow a definite numerical law, so also in anatomy the organs, in physiology the functions, and in natural history the classes, families, and even genera of minerals, plants, and animals present a similar arithmetical ratio." The Lehrbuch procured for Oken the title of Hofrath, or court-councillor, and in 1812 he was appointed ordinary professor of the natural sciences.
Journal Isis
In 1816 Oken began publication of his well-known periodical, Isis, eine encyclopädische Zeitschrift, vorzüglich für Naturgeschichte, vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie. In this journal appeared essays and notices on the natural sciences and other subjects of interest; poetry, and even comments on the politics of other German states, were occasionally admitted. This led to representations and remonstrances from the governments criticized or impugned, and the court of Weimar called upon Oken either to suppress the Isis or resign his professorship. He chose the latter alternative. The publication of the Isis at WeimarWeimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
was prohibited. Oken made arrangements for its issue at Rudolstadt
Rudolstadt
Rudolstadt is a town in the German Bundesland of Thuringia, close to the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north....
, and this continued uninterruptedly until the year 1848.
In 1822 Oken promulgated in Isis the first idea of the annual general meetings of the German naturalists and medical practitioners, which happy idea was realized in the following year, when the first meeting was held at Leipzig. The British Association for the Advancement of Science was at the outset avowedly organized after the German or Okenian model. In 1828 Oken resumed his original humble duties as privatdocent in the newly-established university of Munich, and soon afterwards he was appointed ordinary professor in the same university. In 1832, on the proposal by the Bavarian government to transfer him to a professorship in a provincial university of the state, he resigned his appointments and left the kingdom. He was appointed in 1833 to the professorship of natural history in the then recently-established university of Zürich
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....
. There he continued to reside, fulfilling his professional duties and promoting the progress of his favourite sciences, until his death.
HomologicalHomology (biology)Homology forms the basis of organization for comparative biology. In 1843, Richard Owen defined homology as "the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function". Organs as different as a bat's wing, a seal's flipper, a cat's paw and a human hand have a common underlying...
views
All of Oken's writings are deductive illustrations of an assumed principle, which, with other philosophers of the transcendental school, he deemed equal to the explanation of all the mysteries of nature. According to him, the head was a repetition of the trunk--a kind of second trunk, with its limbs and other appendages; this sum of his observations and comparisons--few of which he ever gave in detail--ought always to be borne in mind in comparing the share taken by Oken in homologicalHomology (biology)
Homology forms the basis of organization for comparative biology. In 1843, Richard Owen defined homology as "the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function". Organs as different as a bat's wing, a seal's flipper, a cat's paw and a human hand have a common underlying...
anatomy with the progress made by other cultivators of that philosophical branch of the science. The idea of the analogy between the skull, or parts of the skull, and the vertebral column had been previously propounded and ventilated in their lectures by Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth was a German physician born in Stuttgart.He studied medicine at Karlsschule Stuttgart, and following graduation attended lectures by Antonio Scarpa and Johann Peter Frank at Pavia...
and Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer was a German biologist and naturalist born in Bebenhausen, today part of the city of Tübingen....
, and in the writings of Johann Peter Frank
Johann Peter Frank
Johann Peter Frank was a German physician and hygienist who was a native of Rodalben.He studied medicine at the Universities of Strasbourg and Heidelberg, and earned his medical doctorate in 1766. He was professor at the Universities of Pavia and Göttingen, and for a period of time was personal...
. By Oken it was applied chiefly in illustration of the mystical system of Schelling--the "all-in-all" and "all-in-every-part." From the earliest to the latest of Oken's writings on the subject, "the head is a repetition of the whole trunk with all its systems: the brain is the spinal cord; the cranium is the vertebral column; the mouth is intestine and abdomen; the nose is the lungs and thorax; the jaws are the limbs; and the teeth the claws or nails." Johann Baptist von Spix
Johann Baptist von Spix
Dr. Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix was a German naturalist.Spix was born in Höchstadt, Middle Franconia, as the seventh of eleven children. His boyhood home is the site of the Spix Museum , opened to the public in 2004...
, in his folio Cephalogenesis (1818), richly illustrated comparative craniology, but presented the facts under the same transcendental guise; and Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
availed himself of the extravagances of these disciples of Schelling to cast ridicule on the whole inquiry into those higher relations of parts to the archetype which Sir Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
called "general homologies."
The vertebral theory of the skull had practically disappeared from anatomical science when the labours of Cuvier drew to their close. In Owen's Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton the idea was not only revived but worked out for the first time inductively, and the theory rightly stated, as follows: "The head is not a virtual equivalent of the trunk, but is only a portion, i.e. certain modified segments, of the whole body. The jaws are the 'haeinal arches' of the first two segments; they are not limbs of the head" (p. 176).
Vaguely and strangely, however, as Oken had blended the idea with his a priori conception of the nature of the head, the chance of appropriating it seems to have overcome the moral sense of Goethe--unless indeed the poet deceived himself. Comparative osteology had early attracted Goethe's attention. In 1786 he published at Jena his essay Ueber den Zwischenkieferknochen des Menschen und der Thiere, showing that the intermaxillary bone existed in man as well as in brutes. But not a word in this essay gives the remotest hint of his having then possessed the idea of the vertebral analogies of the skull. In 1820, in his Morphologie, he first publicly stated that thirty years before the date of that publication he had discovered the secret relationship between the vertebrae and the bones of the head, and that he had always continued to meditate on this subject. The circumstances under which the poet, in 1820, narrates having become inspired with the original idea are suspiciously analogous to those described by Oken in 1807, as producing the same effect on his mind. A bleached skull is accidentally discovered in both instances: in Oken's it was that of a deer in the Harz forest; in Goethe's it was that of a sheep picked up on the shores of the Lido, at Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
It may be assumed that Oken when a Privatdozent at Göttingen in 1806 knew nothing of this unpublished idea or discovery of Goethe, and that Goethe first became aware that Oken had the idea of the vertebral relations of the skull when he listened to the introductory discourse in which the young professor, invited by the poet to Jena, selected this very idea for its subject. It is incredible that Oken, had he adopted the idea from Goethe, or been aware of an anticipation by him, should have omitted to acknowledge the source--should not rather have eagerly embraced so appropriate an opportunity of doing graceful homage to the originality and genius of his patron.
In 1832, Oken was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
.
External links
- Brief biography and bibliography in the Virtual LaboratoryVirtual LaboratoryThe online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
of the Max Planck InstituteMax Planck SocietyThe Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany....