Re: Haeckel chart siting (From world's famous scientists")
- From: "Richard Forrest" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Feb 2006 00:43:03 -0800
Ron O wrote:
Tracy P. Hamilton wrote:
Ron O wrote:
Radix2 wrote:
mccoy@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
http://www.imago-dei.net/imago_dei/2004/09/i_was_browsing_.html
JM
Your point?
And what the heck is it that is causing you to obsess over Haeckel's
incorrect drawings? We also no longer think much of his main
hypothesis either (which the drawing was meant to highlight.
The author of the article never says what the book in question says
about the picture. In the case of Wells some of the books where the
picture was used wrote about Haeckel's fraud. Why that would be bad is
anyones guess. Not only that, but none of the books claimed that
recapitulation (Haeckel's incorrect hypothesis) is of any use to modern
biology. Any biology book should be able to use the pictures to give
the students the general notion that embryos are very similar. This
was never the issue. The issue was how similar and at what stages the
similarity was observed.
I went and looked it up. The book is about milestones in science, and
this
one is von Baer's contributions to embryology in 1826. The only
mention
of Haeckel is the figure caption, and it is a correct description of
Haeckel's thought (which is wrong). The figure is irrelevant (not
Baer's,
nor illustrating von Baer's contribution). Also, the text does not
specifically
mention Haeckel's ideas were wrong or right (since they don't discuss
Haeckel's ideas at all), which is terrible. You should never bring up
an
erroneous idea without discussing why it is wrong (in other words,
one should not teach the controversy).
There is another figure of a homonculus in a sperm, which of
course the figure caption does not say is right or wrong. However,
from
reading the text, it becomes clear that idea (the main contribution of
von Baer was
disproving preformationism) is wrong.
Does someone have the book in question so that we can learn what was
said about the picture?
Ron Okimoto
Tracy P. Hamilton
Thank you for looking it up. No wonder I've never heard of the book.
It sounds like it isn't worth reading. Is it something like a big
picture book that you put on your coffee table and never really read?
My guess is the reason that Haekel's picture gets reprinted so often is
that it is a neat archaic illustration and it is out of copyright so
anyone can use it for whatever they want without paying a dime.
Ron Okimoto
You can download many of Haeckel's engravings from here:
http://www.zum.de/stueber/haeckel/kunstformen/natur.html
They are stunningly beautiful, which is one of the reasons why they are
so frequently used. By the way, don't bother to try to download the
large versions of any of the files. The bandwith on whichever server
they are using to far too narrow. Stick to "Bildschirmauflösung".
RF
.
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