A masterful exhibition of science history, book history, and art
Walk into any public library in America and you’re likely to find a shelf devoted to “Staff Picks.” Imagine that same idea applied to an institution with one of the world’s greatest collections of historical science books, where all the staff hold doctoral degrees and are experts in their fields. The result is the American Museum of Natural History’s 2012 publication entitled Natural Histories, edited by Tom Baione. The subtitle, Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library is no mere boasting and aptly describes what you will find between the covers of this wonderful book.
Natural Histories profiles twenty stunning illustrated texts, arranged chronologically from Conrad Gessner’s Historia Animalum of 1551 to Emile-Alain Séguy’s volumes on Butterflies and Insects from the 1920s. Each entry takes up two two-page spreads, which is enough space to reproduce five or six beautiful full-color illustrations. The images are accompanied by brief essays, written by the museum’s curators, research associates, directors, and librarians, that detail the production of these historical volumes and explain each book’s scientific importance. Though the book features several well-known naturalists such as John James Audubon, John Gould (both known for their birds, but featured here for their mammals), Charles Darwin (Voyage of the Beagle), and Ernst Haeckel (Art Forms of Nature), the contents also include the work of many lesser-known figures, making for an eye-opening educational experience. It brought to my attention several natural history texts of which I was not previously aware. Scanned versions of many of these books can likely be found at online sources such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library or HathiTrust.
Most of the historic books profiled in this volume are zoological treatises, but the scope of natural history the authors cover is broad enough to include other disciplines such as astronomy (the star atlases of Johannes Bayer and Elijah Burritt), anthropology (the Native American portraits of Charles Bird King), geology (William Hamilton’s book on the eruptions of Vesuvius), archaeology (Napoleon’s grand project Description of Egypt), microscopy (Robert Hooke’s Micrographia), and even gemology (Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s buyers’ guide to East Indian jewels). Oddly enough, there are no strictly botanical texts included, but many of the selections do feature birds and insects depicted amid the flowering plants and trees of their natural habitats. As a book designer, I found one of the more interesting entries to be Barbara Rhodes’s brief summary on the gilt-stamped cover designs of popular nature guides of the Victorian era.
This book is sold in a boxed set that also includes 40 loose-leaf print reproductions of historic natural history illustrations that are suitable for framing. This original Natural Histories volume has spawned a series with three sequels so far: Extraordinary Birds, Opulent Oceans, and Innumerable Insects. Unless you have an avid interest in ornithology, marine biology, or entomology, Natural Histories is a good one to start with because you get a little bit of everything. This beautifully produced book will please any reader with an interest in natural history, wildlife art, or the history of books.
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Vindicating evolution’s controversial champion
Charles Darwin may have formulated the theory of evolution, but most people learned about it from Ernst Haeckel. Following the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Haeckel, a German biologist, became one of the theory’s earliest and most outspoken champions. He spread the gospel of evolution through his popular books, many of which he illustrated himself with beautiful works of zoological art. While Darwin’s revolutionary theory was very controversial for its time, Haeckel’s presentation of it was even more so. Haeckel built an entire atheistic philosophy around evolution and used evolutionary theory to vehemently attack religion. Over the course of his career, Haeckel was accused of overzealously fabricating fraudulent illustrations to support his scientific claims. He has also been posthumously accused of having inspired Nazi ideology. In his 2008 biography of Haeckel, The Tragic Sense of Life, author Robert J. Richards closely examines the life and work of this controversial figure and assesses the validity of the accusations that have been leveled against Haeckel, both during his lifetime and after his death.
While, as the subtitle indicates, much of the book deals with the “Struggle over Evolutionary Thought,” The Tragic Sense of Life is also in fact a true cradle-to-grave biography of Haeckel, and a very good one. The early chapters on Haeckel’s intellectual development are particularly fascinating. Richards elegantly delineates a chain of thought from Kant to Goethe to Humboldt to Darwin to Haeckel, illustrating each figure’s influence on his follower and how the ideals of Romanticism trickled down the chain and filtered into Haeckel’s work. Richards also makes a strong case that events in Haeckel’s personal life, most notably the death of his first wife, altered his philosophical outlook and thus affected the course of his scientific career.
Like most Europeans of the 19th century, Haeckel was a racist, or more specifically, a racialist. When the theory of evolution burst upon the scientific landscape, most biologists believed that the races of mankind were separate species, perhaps even descended from different families of apes. Whites were seen as more highly evolved than the “primitive” or “lesser” races. (Richards cites biologist Friedrich Tiedemann as one exception who did not hold these views.) This racialist view of humanity is evident in Haeckel’s work, an unfortunate relic of the times in which he lived. Richards disproves, however, any assertions that Haeckel was an anti-Semite, demonstrating in fact that he had a very enlightened attitude toward the Jews. Richards addresses the scandal over Haeckel’s “fraudulent” illustrations by weighing the arguments on both sides, concluding the fiasco was more of a stupid mistake than intentional chicanery. The same thorough scrutiny is applied to the accusations of proto-Nazism. There seems little doubt that racialism and a twisted interpretation of evolutionary theory were a part of Nazi ideology, but Haeckel’s atheistic philosophy and favorable attitude towards the Jews make him an unlikely progenitor of the Nazi party line. The Nazis themselves, at one point, officially denied Haeckel as an ideological influence.
This book is a very comprehensive examination of Haeckel’s scientific career and delves quite a bit into 19th century philosophical theory. Nevertheless, though aimed at a scholarly audience it is quite accessible to the general reader and makes a fascinating read for any admirer of Haeckel’s work. The second appendix, however, a lecture on historiography and a recapitulation of the Nazi debate, is aimed strictly at historians and is best skipped by the nonacademic reader.
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The Riddle in a nutshell
This Kindle file consists of the text of a lecture delivered by German biologist Ernst Haeckel on October 9, 1892. In this speech, Haeckel asserts that the monumental scientific advances of the 19th century, in particular Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, prove that the most rationally accurate philosophical and religious view of the creation, composition, and fundamental workings of the universe is the monism and pantheism of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Haeckel would go on to develop the ideas of this lecture further in his excellent 1901 book The Riddle of the Universe, in which he outlines a monistic world view that can serve as a viable cosmology for modern freethinkers, skeptics, pantheists, and atheists.
Like many scientists of his day, Darwin included, Haeckel didn’t get everything right, as one would expect from a work written prior to a thorough understanding of DNA, relativity, or quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, his fundamental philosophical arguments remain valid. One antiquated idea that’s examined in-depth in both works is the concept of “ether”, a term used to describe the medium which exists between the particles of matter in the universe. In the post-Einstein world, this ether could be seen as the very fabric of space-time itself. Nowadays, ether might even be analogous to dark matter. The point is, even though all of Haeckel’s scientific conclusions may not have survived the scrutiny of the past century, it doesn’t change the fact that his application of empirical science to the philosophical questions of the nature of the universe, God, human consciousness, and free will still provides thought-provoking inspiration for rational thinkers looking for answers to such universal riddles.
While The Riddle of the Universe was directed at a general audience, Monism as Connecting Religion and Science is a lecture that was delivered to an organization of scientists. For that reason, the text of this speech is neither as accessible nor as engaging as that of the longer and better book it inspired. If you’ve already read The Riddle of the Universe, you will find little new here. The best purpose this 25-page speech can serve is as an outline or “cheat sheet” of that larger work. If you haven’t read The Riddle, this brief abstract might give you enough idea of the contents of that larger work to help you decide if it’s worth reading. On the other hand, I’d hate to think that the somewhat dry, scholarly prose of this lecture might dissuade readers from endeavoring to tackle the more elegant and eloquent book which followed. My recommendation, therefore, is that unless you’re just really a huge fan of Haeckel, this short work is skippable. By all means, read The Riddle of the Universe instead.
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An essential read for freethinkers
It’s a shame Ernst Haeckel was a racist, because this is an excellent book. Haeckel was a biologist, naturalist, artist, and a vigorous proponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution who, like many European and American men of the 19th century, thought that the white race was more highly evolved than the other, “primitive” races. Thankfully, with the exception of two or three questionable sentences, that racial view is entirely absent from this book. In The Riddle of the Universe, published in 1901, this Renaissance man sums up his life’s work for the general reader. He provides an overview of the state of scientific knowledge at the close of the 19th century and applies that knowledge to such philosophical mysteries as the creation of the universe, the existence of God, the nature of human consciousness, and the question of free will.
Haeckel uses the “Law of Substance” (now called the law of conservation of matter and energy) as the foundation for a monistic conception of the universe. The idea of monism was best developed by the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. It is opposed to dualism, the prevailing world view of most religions, which envisions the universe as being constructed of two substances—matter and spirit. In monism, the universe is only composed of one substance—matter—and any intelligence or “soul” must be an inherent property of that sole substance. Only by combining into more and more complex structures does this property accumulate into what we recognize as intelligence, from the basic stimulus and response of protozoa to rational human consciousness. The mechanism that accomplishes this is Darwinian evolution. In fact, the entire universe, organic and inorganic alike, can be seen as being in a perpetual state of evolution, and the sharp categorical distinctions we make between living and inanimate things, intelligent and non-intelligent life, matter and space, etc., should be abandoned in favor of more fluid spectra. The religious view that coincides with this monistic cosmology is pantheism, another contribution of Spinoza. Pantheism sees the entire universe itself, the monistic substance, as God. Haeckel acknowledges that pantheism is essentially the same as atheism—the absence of belief in an anthropomorphic God—only looked at from a different perspective. By combining the thought of Spinoza and Darwin into a unified theory of the universe, with help from Schopenhauer and Goethe, Haeckel elucidates a secular cosmology for rational thinkers of the modern world.
Although the text is crammed with scientific and philosophical terminology, the translation by Joseph McCabe is surprisingly easy to read. 21st-century readers will find much of the science elementary. The history of science, on the other hand, is an area most of us could use an education in, and Haeckel provides a good overview, although a German-centric one. Like Darwin, Haeckel didn’t get everything right, but the book’s philosophical value redeems its scientific inaccuracies. The book gradually progresses from scientific matters to religious and ethical issues. There is some anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-Vatican rhetoric that’s probably unnecessary for today’s audience. Needless to say, readers of a religious persuasion will not like this book, but for freethinkers it’s a must-read. You won’t agree with everything Haeckel says, but you will find many of your own ideas confirmed and gain an understanding of how these ideas can be combined into a cohesive philosophy. After all, what could be more important than establishing your own personal belief system (or lack of belief system, as the case may be)? It is incredibly invigorating to encounter a book that takes on a subject no less than everything in existence and the very nature of existence itself. Perhaps the real riddle of the universe is, why aren’t there more books like this?
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