Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology
My aim has been rather to call attention to the existence of diverse typical attitudes to the problems of form, and to trace the interplay of the theories that have arisen out of them.
The main currents of morphological thought are to my mind three - the functional or synthetic, the formal or transcendental, and the materialistic or disintegrative.
The first is associated with the great names of Aristotle, Cuvier, and von Baer, and leads easily to the more open vitalism of Lamarck and Samuel Butler. The typical representative of the second attitude is E.Geoffrey St Hilaire, and this habit of thought has greatly influenced the development of evolutionary morphology.
The main battle-ground of these two opposing tendencies is the problem of the relation of function to form. Is function the mechanical result of form, or is form merely the manifestation of function or activity? What is the essence of life - organisation or activity?
The materialistic attitude is not distinctively biological, but is common to practically all fields of thought. It dates back to the Greek atomists, and the triumph of mechanical science in the 19th century has induced many to accept materialism as the only possible scientific method. In biology it is more akin to the formal than to the functional attitude.
In the course of this book I have not hidden my own sympathy with the functional attitude.
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