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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800-1900

Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800-1900

Nyhart, Lynn K.

Paperback

Series: Science and Its Conceptual Foundations

BiologyZoology

ISBN10: 0226610888
ISBN13: 9780226610887
Publisher: Univ Of Chicago Pr
Published: Oct 15 1995
Pages: 428
Weight: 1.55
Height: 1.04 Width: 6.06 Depth: 8.99
Language: English
Morphology-the study of form-is often regarded as a failed science that made only limited contributions to our understanding of the living world. Challenging this view, Lynn Nyhart argues that morphology was integral to the life sciences of the nineteenth century. Biology Takes Form traces the development of morphological research in German universities and illuminates significant institutional and intellectual changes in nineteenth-century German biology.

Although there were neither professors of morphology nor a morphologists' society, morphologists achieved influence by colonizing niches in a variety of disciplines. Scientists in anatomy, zoology, natural history, and physiology considered their work morphological, and the term encompassed research that today might be classified as embryology, systematics, functional morphology, comparative physiology, ecology, behavior, evolutionary theory, or histology. Nyhart draws on research notes, correspondence, and other archival material to examine how these scientists responded to new ideas and to the work of colleagues. She examines the intertwined histories of morphology and the broader biological enterprise, demonstrating that the study of form was central to investigations of such issues as the relationships between an animal's structure and function, between an organism and its environment, and between living species and their ancestors.

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