56 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



altogether different field of biological investigation on 

 mentioning Eoux's name : we are leaving hypothetic con- 

 struction, at least in its absoluteness, and are entering the 

 realms of scientific experiment in morphology. 



EXPERIMENTAL MORPHOLOGY 



I have told you already in the last lecture that, while 

 in the eighteenth century individual morphogenesis had 

 formed the centre of biological interest and been studied 

 experimentally in a thoroughly adequate manner, that 

 interest gradually diminished, until at last the physiology 

 of form as an exact separate science was almost wholly 

 forgotten. At least that was the state of affairs as regards 

 zoological biology ; botanists, it must be granted, have never 

 lost the historical continuity to such a degree ; botany has 

 never ceased to be regarded as one science and never was 

 broken up into parts as zoology was. Zoological physiology 

 and zoological morphology indeed were for many years in a 

 relationship to one another not very much closer than the 

 relation between philology and chemistry. 



There were always a few men, of course, who strove 

 against the current. The late Wilhelm His, 1 for instance, 

 described the embryology of the chick in an original 

 manner, in order to find out the mechanical relations of 

 embryonic parts, by which passive deformation, as an 

 integrating part of morphogenesis, might be induced. He 

 also most clearly stated the ultimate aim of embryology to 

 be the mathematical derivation of the adult form from the 

 distribution of growth in the germ. To Alexander Goette 2 



1 Unsere Korperform, Leipzig, 1875. 

 ' 2 Die Entwickclungsyeschichte der Unke, Leipzig, 1875. 



