Form and Function: Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

This book is not intended to be a full or detailed history of animal morphology: a complete account is given neither of morphological discoveries nor of morphological theories. 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.
FORM AND FUNCTION CHAPTER 1 THE liKGlKNIKGS Of COMPAUATf VE ANATOMY The first name of which the history of anatomy keeps record is that of Alcmacon, a contemporary of Pythagoras (6th century n.c). His interests appear to have been rather physiological than anatomical. He traced the chief nerves of sense to the brain, which he considered to be the seat of the sonl, and he made .some good guesses at the mechanism of the organs of special sense. He showed that, contrary to the received opinion, the seminal fluid did not originate in the spinal cord. Two comparisons arc recorded of his, one that puberty is the equivalent of the flowering time in plants, the other that milk is the equivalent of white of egg.1 Both show his bias towards looking at the functional side of living things. The latter comparison reappears in Aristotle. A century later Diogenes of Apollonia gave a description of the venous system. He too placed the seat of sensation in the brain. He assumed a vital air in

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; ; I Thu Beginnings of Comparative Anatomy i; II Comparative Anatomy re pore Cuvier ; III Cuvikk 3'; IV Goethe 45; V ftienne geoffroy St HlLAIKE 5^; VI The Followers of Ktifnne Gfoffroy St Hilairr 70; VII The German Transcen dent a lists so; VI11 Transcendental Anatomv in England-Richard ; Owen 102; IX Karl Ernst von Baer 113; X The Emkryological Criterion '33; XI The Cell-Theory 169; XII The Close of the I'rf-evolutionarv Period 190; xm The Ketati