[The scholarly program of Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger (1781-1833) and it importance for the development of life sciences].
Although Johann Friedrich Meckel the Younger was one of the most famous anatomists, his research work has been severely neglected in the recent historiographical literature on the German morphology. The goal of our study is to approach a general characterization of his research program. Our analysis reveals that Meckel introduced the Cuvierian empiricism in Germany, but he also considered the "Abstraktion" as a main component of the scientific knowledge. According to his epistemology on nascent organisms and transmutable species, both, variability and relatedness of the organic forms are important to the same degree. Meckel explicitly adopted the Jean-Baptiste de Lamarcks (1744-1829) evolutionary theories. Even though in Meckel's discourse about diversity the Cuvierian notion of "functional adaptation" was preserved, the main goal of his research program was to demonstrate empirically the "Allgemeinheit des Bildungstypus". For this purpose, he considered the entire variety of the animal kingdom: normal as well as abnormal organisms, adult specimens and above all embryos. Moreover, he believed that the abnormal development is due to the same laws as the normal development. He applied parallelisms to a new domain, the study of malformation. With Meckel's researches on teratology, a new era in the analyses of the anomalies was opened. They became an integral part of the natural diversity and thus a highly exploited subject of biomedical researches. Meckel's empirical and epistemological writings on the embryology, comparative embryology, teratology, pathology, systematics and comparative anatomy have largely contributed to the foundation of the biological research.
Göbbel
Luminita
L
Institut für Anatomie und Zellbiologie, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Grosse Steinstrasse 52, D-06097 Halle, Saale.
Schultka
Rüdiger
R
D000715:Anatomy / Q000266:history*; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004626:Embryology / Q000266:history; D005858:Germany; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans