Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal MorphologyRussell, E. S. (Edward Stuart)
History
Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology
Russell, E. S. (Edward Stuart)
Anatomy, Comparative -- History; Morphology (Animals) -- History
Animal physiology, on its side, had developed in complete isolation from
morphology into a science of the functioning of the adult and finished
animal, considered as a more or less stable physico-chemical mechanism.
Since the days of Ludwig, Claude Bernard and E. du Bois Reymond, the
physiologists' chief care had been to analyse vital activities into
their component physical and chemical processes, and to trace out the
interchange of matter and energy between the organism and its
environment. Physiologists had left untouched, perhaps wisely, the much
more difficult problem of the causes of the development of form. For all
practical purposes they took the animal-machine as given, and did not
trouble about its mode of origin. They held indeed that form-production
was due to a complex of physico-chemical causes, which they hoped some
day to unravel;[464] but this future physiology of development remained
quite embryonic.
Physiology then had not really come into contact with the problems of
form, and it could give the morphologist no direct help when he turned
to investigate the causes of form-production. It had, however, a
determining influence upon the methods of those who first broke ground
in this No Man's Land between morphology proper and physiology. But it
is significant that it was a morphologist and not a physiologist that
did the first spade-work.
The pioneer in this field, both as investigator and as thinker, was W.
Roux, who sketched in the 'eighties the main outlines of a new science
of causal morphology, to which he gave the name of
_Entwicklungsmechanik_. The choice of name was deliberate, and the word
implied, first, that the new science was essentially an investigation of
the development of form, not of the mode of action of a formed
mechanism, and second, that the methods to be adopted were
mechanistic.[465]
Though Roux was the only begetter of the science of
_Entwicklungsmechanik_, he was, of course, not the first to investigate
experimentally the formative processes of animal life. Study of
regeneration dates back to Trembley (1740-44), Reaumur (1742), Bonnet
(1745), and Spallanzani (1768-82),[466] and in the years preceding Roux's
activity good work was done by Philipeaux. A beginning had been made
with experimental teratology by E. Geoffroy St Hilaire and others, and
the work of C. Dareste[467] remains classical. Back in the 18th century,
some of John Hunter's experiments had a bearing upon the problems of
form; his work on transplantation was followed up in the 19th century by
Flourens, P. Bert, Ollier and many others. In founding in 1872 the
_Archives de Zoologie experimentale et generale_ H. de Lacaze-Duthiers
put forward in his introduction a powerful plea for the use of the
experimental method in zoology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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