Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel | Biography

Ernst Haeckel was born in Potsdam, Germany, the son of a Prussian government official. After graduating from the cathedral gymnasium in Merseberg in 1852, he entered the University of Berlin as medical student. Haeckel took occasional semesters at the University of Würzburg to study under Franz Leydig (1821-1908), Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), and Albert von Kölliker (1817-1905), but was particularly influenced by Johannes Müller (1801-1858) at Berlin. Never intending to become a practicing physician, he directed his efforts as much as possible toward comparative anatomy, embryology, cell biology, and marine zoology.

After receiving his medical degree in 1857, Haeckel continued his training in zoology under Müller. Only temporarily frustrated by his mentor's untimely death, he soon found a new mentor in Carl Gegenbaur (1826-1903) at the University of Jena. Named professor of zoology at Jena in 1862, he became a controversial figure, much honored internationally. Among his students was Eduard Strasburger (1844-1912). He retired in 1909 and died in Jena.

Reading Charles Darwin's (1809-1882) Origin of Species in its first German translation as Über die Entstehung der Arten im Thier-und Pflanzen-Reich durch natürliche Züchtung in 1860 was like a revelation to Haeckel. He immediately abandoned medicine and devoted the rest of his life to supporting, expanding, and promulgating Darwinian theories. Although he supported evolutionary theory wholeheartedly, Haeckel was skeptical about natural selection as the means of evolutionary progress. Rather, he taught that life originated spontaneously as a common one-celled ancestor and evolved through environmental jolts. His theory could be regarded as an extension of Lamarckism, the idea that inheritance depends upon environment.

Haeckel's interest in evolution went far beyond natural science. He saw in Darwin the basis of an entire monistic philosophical and sociopolitical system. Toward this goal, in 1866 he published Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (General Morphology of Organisms), a scientific treatise liberally sprinkled with polemics and speculation.

As a monist materialist, he attempted to reduce all biological phenomena to mechanical causes. That is, he tried to understand all biological processes and diversity solely in terms of the laws of physics. His 1876 work, Die Perigenesis der Plastidule (The Genesis of Things Around the Protoplasmic Molecules) argued that heredity results from specific molecular actions.

Haeckel's views on evolution were influenced by both the romantic philosophy of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who believed that a creative spiritual force permeated the universe, and the absolute idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), for whom the development of all things proceeded dialectically by logically determinate stages of simultaneous cancelling, preserving, and raising a thing to its next higher level.

Haeckel's lack of scientific rigor has frequently been criticized. Several Christian fundamentalist and anti-evolution groups have accused him of fraud. The Nazis exploited his statement that politics is applied biology. Haeckel's phylogenic theories, and especially his extreme form of social Darwinism, accord easily with Aryan racism.

Most of Haeckel's scientific theories were later shown to be false. Nevertheless, his impact on evolutionary biology is permanent. He expanded the domain of inquiry, showed the value of asking speculative questions, and coined such terms as "ecology," "phylogeny," and "phylum."