Z52. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



Study to be in the main superfluous, since everything was ready-formed 

 before, whereas Wolff showed that in this sphere there was still an immense 

 amount to be discovered and investigated, thereby opening up fresh fields 

 of research, in which very successful work was done during the succeeding 

 epoch. It has frequently been said, however, that in this question Wolff was 

 entirely in the right and his opponents in the wrong. This view is utterly 

 at variance with historical facts. When it first arose, the preformation theory 

 not only was fully justified and compatible with the scientific standpoint 

 of the time, but, as has been pointed out above, also constituted a real 

 advance, whereas the epigenesis theory, as Wolff formulated it, certainly 

 shot far beyond the mark. He who denied to the undeveloped egg all trace 

 of organic structure would undoubtedly have found modern ontogenetical 

 research, with its strong emphasis on the orientation of the egg and its 

 various parts and with the maintenance of the immutability of the factors 

 of heredity, highly preformational. 



His romantic conception of nature 

 It is, however, by no means in his epigenesis theory alone that Wolff shows 

 himself at variance with his age and foreshadows a new era; the whole of 

 his scientific matter and his entire conception of nature differ in a marked 

 degree from those of his contemporaries. He is, as has already been pointed 

 out, a precursor in the course which natural science took at the end of the 

 eighteenth century and which is termed natural philosophy; this course was 

 directed, particularly in Germany, towards an entirely new knowledge of 

 nature, with the utter rejection of both the aims and the means with which 

 natural research had been carried out up to that time. Biological natural- 

 philosophy, however, is only a link in a universal cultural movement of far 

 wider influence, which will be explained later on. But first we must devote 

 some words to the application of the experimental method to botany during 

 the eighteenth century, as well as to one or two anatomical and morpho- 

 logical scientists who were at work during the same period. 



In the eighteenth century the science of botany was governed, far more 

 than animal biology, by Linnasanism. During the same period, however, 

 one or two naturalists employed in their study of the vegetable kingdom 

 methods other than the purely systematic; as a rule they worked in obscu- 

 rity and their results were appreciated only by succeeding ages. One excep- 

 tion to this was the English experimental scientist, Stephen Hales, whose 

 work was highly appreciated by his contemporaries; his writings were 

 translated into French by Buffon and into German by Christian Wolff. And 

 he was well worthy of the attention paid to him, for he is without doubt 

 one of the most remarkable biologists of the eighteenth century. 



Hales was born in 1679 ^^ Beckesbury in the south of England. He was 

 of good family, and after studying theology at Cambridge he took holy 



