Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud

Ernst Haeckel’s Embryological Illustrations

Bibliographic Data

ID3486878
AuthorsNick Hopwood (0000-0001-7069-7497, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume97
Issue2
Pages260-301
Publication date2006-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/504734
PMID16892945
OpenAlexW2261018372
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited23

Comparative illustrations of vertebrate embryos by the leading nineteenth-century Darwinist Ernst Haeckel have been both highly contested and canonical. Though the target of repeated fraud charges since 1868, the pictures were widely reproduced in textbooks through the twentieth century. Concentrating on their first ten years, this essay uses the accusations to shed light on the novelty of Haeckel's visual argumentation and to explore how images come to count as proper representations or illegitimate schematics as they cross between the esoteric and exoteric circles of science. It exploits previously unused manuscripts to reconstruct the drawing, printing, and publishing of the illustrations that attracted the first and most influential attack, compares these procedures to standard practice, and highlights their originality. It then explains why, though Haeckel was soon accused, controversy ignited only seven years later, after he aligned a disciplinary struggle over embryology with a major confrontation between liberal nationalism--and Catholicism--and why the contested pictures nevertheless survived

Argumentation theory · Art · Creativity · Epistemology · Literature · Originality · Political science · Sociology · Evolution and Science Education · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science