282 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
outside their primary field have always attracted suspicion or ridicule. In 1831,
near the end of a long life, a poet who had ventured into science deplored his
failure to obtain a fair hearing, but defended his forays as internally necessary for a
broad and searching intellect:
The public was taken aback, for inasmuch as it wishes to be served well
and uniformly, it demands that every man remain in his own field. This
demand is well grounded, for a man who wishes to achieve excellence,
which is infinite in its scope, ought not to venture on the very paths that
God and nature do. For this reason it is expected that a person who has
distinguished himself in one field, whose manner and style are generally
recognized and esteemed, will not leave his field, much less venture into
one entirely unrelated. Should an individual attempt this, no gratitude is
shown him; indeed, even when he does his task well, he is given no special
praise. But a man of lively intellect feels that he exists not for the public's
sake, but for his own. He does not care to tire himself out and wear himself
down by doing the same thing over and over again. Moreover, every
energetic man of talent has something universal in him, causing him to cast
about here and there and to select his field of activity according to his own
desire (1831 essay, in Mueller and Engard, 1952, p. 16.9).We might ignore this statement, if its author stood among the many hopefuls
whom history fails to memorialize in either their chosen or their adopted
professions. But the writer cited above, J. W. von Goethe, wrote a thing or two of
enduring merit! Moreover, and in retrospect, his ventures into science far
transcended the brief forays of an amateur dabbler.
In any case, Goethe did not suffer complete neglect from scientists during his
lifetime. In 1831, the great anatomist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire praised
Goethe's science as the work of "a poet trying to sing the grandeur of the universe
in another form" ("un poete s'essayant de chanter sous une autre forme les
grandeurs de l'univers"—1831, p. 189). Geoffroy continued (1831, p. 193): "If
Goethe had not already amassed enough titles to be proclaimed the greatest genius
of his century, he would have added, to his crown of great poet and profound
moralist, the fame of a wise naturalist—due to him for the profundity of his views,
and for the philosophical force of his opinions on the subject of botanical
analogies."*
But Geoffroy's praise (see Fig. 4-8) cannot be reckoned as entirely
disinterested, for Goethe had just favored his side in the greatest brouhaha of early
19th century zoology—the celebrated 1830 debate with Cuvier before the
*Geoffroy wrote this work before Owen's codification of the terms "homology" and
"analogy" in their modern meaning. Unfortunately—for the resulting situation could not
be more confusing—Geoffroy used the word analogy (theorie des analogues) for
similarities of common generating type that we now call homologies. In this chapter, I
will use the modern terminology, and only retain Geoffroy's name in direct quotations
(but always with a reminder that he speaks of homology by our reckoning).