288 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
this second force as cyclical, in opposition to the directional principle of refining
sap. He envisages three full cycles of contraction and expansion during ontogeny.
The interplay of these progressive and cyclical forces produces the full pattern of a
general refinement up the stem, but impacted by discontinuities and transitions that
express no directional pattern ("contraction" of stem-leaves to sepals by bunching
together in a circlet, for example). The cotyledons begin in a retracted state. The
main leaves, and their substantial spacing on the stem, represent the first
expansion. The bunching of leaves to form the sepals at the base of the flower
marks the second contraction, and the subsequent elaboration of petals the second
expansion. The reduction of archetypal leaf size to form pistils and stamens marks
the third contraction, and the formation of fruit the last and most exuberant
expansion. The contracted seed within the fruit then starts the cycle again in the
next generation. Put these three formative principles together—the archetypal leaf,
progressive refinement of sap up the stem, and three expansion-contraction cycles
of vegetation, blossoming, and bearing fruit—and the vast botanical diversity of
our planet falls under the chief vision of formalism: production of realized variety
from interaction of a few abstract, general, and internally based (not externally
imposed and adaptationally driven) morphological laws: "Whether the plant
vegetates, blossoms, or bears fruit, it nevertheless is always the same organs with
varying functions and with frequent changes in form, that fulfill the dictates of
nature. The same organ which expanded on the stem as a leaf and assumed a
highly diverse form, will contract in the calyx, expand again in the petal, contract
in the reproductive organs, and expand for the last time as fruit" (1790, No. 115).
This formalist commitment implies an aversion to primary explanation by
adaptation, function or final cause. In accord with all the great formalists, Goethe
often expressed his dislike of explanations based upon the externality of fit
between form and function (though he delighted in the evident fact of such fit, as
formalists also generally do, for such an admission poses no threat to the chief
formalist argument for primacy of morphological order—see Chapter 11 on
exaptation).
Goethe's statements on final cause often attack the larger idea of manufacture
for explicitly human ends—not the chief complaint of formalist morphology, but
worth recording, if only for the power of Goethe's prose:
For several centuries down to the present, we have been retarded in our
philosophic views of natural phenomena by the idea that living organisms
are created and shaped to certain ends by a teleological life force. ... Why
should he not call a plant a weed, when from his point of view it really
ought not to exist: He will much more readily attribute the existence of
thistles hampering his work in the field to the curse of an enraged
benevolent spirit, or to the malice of a sinister one, than simply regard them
as children of the universal nature, cherished as much by her as the wheat
he carefully cultivates and values so highly (from essay of 1790, in Mueller
and Engard, 1952).