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"Reading the Shape of Nature" vividly recounts the turbulent early
history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the
contrasting careers of its founder Louis Agassiz and his son
Alexander. Through the story of this institution and the
individuals who formed it, Mary P. Winsor explores the conflicting
forces that shaped systematics in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Debates over the philosophical foundations of
classification, details of taxonomic research, the young
institution's financial struggles, and the personalities of the men
most deeply involved are all brought to life.
In 1859, Louis Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative
Zoology to house research on the ideal types that he believed were
embodied in all living forms. Agassiz's vision arose from his
insistence that the order inherent in the diversity of life
reflected divine creation, not organic evolution. But the mortar of
the new museum had scarcely dried when Darwin's "Origin" was
published. By Louis Agassiz's death in 1873, even his former
students, including his son Alexander, had defected to the
evolutionist camp. Alexander, a self-made millionaire, succeeded
his father as director and introduced a significantly different
agenda for the museum.
To trace Louis and Alexander's arguments and the style of science
they established at the museum, Winsor uses many fascinating
examples that even zoologists may find unfamiliar. The locus of all
this activity, the museum building itself, tells its own story
through a wonderful series of archival photographs.
The most prominent naturalist in Britain before Charles Darwin,
Richard Owen made empirical discoveries and offered theoretical
innovations that were crucial to the proof of evolution. Among his
many lasting contributions to science was the first clear
definition of the term homology--"the same organ in different
animals under every variety of form and function." He also
graphically demonstrated that all vertebrate species were built on
the same skeletal plan and devised the vertebrate archetype as a
representation of the simplest common form of all vertebrates.
Just as Darwin's ideas continue to propel the modern study of
adaptation, so too will Owen's contributions fuel the new interest
in homology, organic form, and evolutionary developmental biology.
His theory of the archetype and his views on species origins were
first offered to the general public in "On the Nature of Limbs,
"published in 1849. It reemerges here in a facsimile edition with
introductory essays by prominent historians, philosophers, and
practitioners from the modern evo-devo community.
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