material becomes a constructed system, and 

 the odd facts appear as a part of a unity of 

 the whole critical thing .... This is 

 what Baer accomplished in his uncompleted 

 basic work about the development of animals 

 which came out in the German language in 

 1828 - 37; the last part came out only at 

 the end of the past century. 



It is net surprising, therefore, that Verandskii put Baer on a 

 continuum with Aristotle, Harvey, Lamarck, Cuvier, and Darwin, 

 and among the Russian academicians Lomonosov and Eiler.H 



Baer's greatest contribution, which until now has still 

 not been sufficiently evaluated in the history of science, 

 appears in his UBER ENTWICKLUNGSGESCHICHTE. There he 

 exhibited a tendency towards Naturphilosophie, to the extent 

 that reaction to it was expressed as complete renunciation of 

 his theoretical arguments and conclusions. The Naturphilosophie 

 of Schelling and Oken proclaimed that the task of science was to 

 look for the unified features of the world by thinking, through 

 the creative activities of the mind. 12 "This situation," as 

 noted later by Ya. A. Borzenkov, 13 "had a very strong and 

 highly ruinous effect on the study of nature. If nature is only 

 an apparent object (discerned only by the impression of thinking, 

 of the creative spirit), then . . .the nature investigator may 

 not try hard to make observations and perform experiments, "14 

 because he is in a condition to understand nature regardless 

 of his empirical activities. In contrast, empirical natural 

 investigators such as Cuvier were opposed to Naturphilosophie 

 a priori, resulting in their "nominating, classifying, and 

 describing"15 without making any theoretical generalization. 



11. V. I. Verandskii, "Memories of the Academician K. M. von 

 Baer. First collection of the Memoirs of Baer." Moscow: 

 Akademii Nauk, 1927, pp. 1-9. 



12. To philosophy, nature means creative nature. 



13. The historical outline of the directions existing in the 

 zoological sciences in the nineteenth century. Speech 

 given in ceremonial meeting of the Imperial Moscow 

 University on January 12, 1881, by Ordinary Professor 

 Ya. Borzenkov, pp., 1-61. 



14. Borzenkov, p. 15. 



15. Borzenkov suggested replacing this "slightly long motto by 

 a shorter and more energetic one: Do not discuss!", p. 27, 



307 



