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Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers: the Case of Bathybius Haeckelii Author(S): Philip F

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Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers: the Case of Bathybius Haeckelii Author(S): Philip F Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers: The Case of Bathybius haeckelii Author(s): Philip F. Rehbock Source: Isis, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 504-533 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/228925 . Accessed: 15/05/2013 17:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 150.135.114.195 on Wed, 15 May 2013 17:26:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers:The Case of Bat hybius haeckelii By Philip F. Rehbock* INTRODUCTION AT THE NORWICH MEETING of the British Association for the Ad- vancement of Science in August 1868, Thomas Henry Huxley announced the results of his microscopical examination of some specimens of North Atlantic bottom sediment. Among the constituents of these seemingly unexciting speci- mens Huxley had found some curious "granule-heaps," surrounded by extensive masses of viscous matter, which he described variously as "lumps of a transparent, gelatinous substance" and a "colourless, and structureless matrix."' Tests of the substance convinced Huxley that he was dealing with a new type of organism in the form of virtually undifferentiated protoplasm. He gave the organism the generic name Bathybius, after its oceanic habitat, and called the species B. haeckelii, after his friend and fellow champion of Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel. Bathybius haeckelii was to live a brief but eventful life of some seven years. In 1875 the scientists aboard H.M.S. Challenger, then nearing the end of their epochal voyage for the establishment of the new science of oceanography, discovered that Bathybiuswas nothing more than an inorganic precipitate. Despite his obvious embarrassment, Huxley readily admitted his error. Haeckel, however, who had applauded Huxley's original discovery, would not give up so easily. For him Bathybiuswas both an important member of his new class of unicellular organisms, the Monera, and a keystone in his mechanistic philosophy of life. Received May 1974: revised/accepted June 1975. *Department of General Science, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. I am greatly indebted to Professor Camille Limoges of the Institut d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des Sciences, Universite de Montreal, who suggested the topic of this study and whose inspiration and criticisms were essential at each stage of the research. I would also like to thank Professor William Coleman of the History of Science Department and Professors Jeremy B. C. Jackson and Steven M. Stanley of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, The Johns Hopkins University, for their careful reading and comments. I also wish to thank the National Science Foundation for support of this study. An abbreviated version of the paper was presented at the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology on April 7, 1973. This paper was awarded the 1974 Henry Schurman prize of the History of Science Society. 'T. H. Huxley, "On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths in the North Atlaritic Ocean," Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 1868, N.S. 8:203-212 (p. 205). See also T. H. Huxley, "On Some Organisms which Live at the Bottom of the North Atlantic, in Depths of 6000 to 15,000 Feet," Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1868, p. 102. 504 This content downloaded from 150.135.114.195 on Wed, 15 May 2013 17:26:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BATHYBIUS HAECKELII 505 Another decade would pass before he would abandon Huxley's creation. Previous narrations of the Bathybiusstory have been characterized by a brevity and jocularity which obscures the seriousness of the controversy and the zeal of the debators. To be sure, there is a comical tone to the affair, deriving from the comments of the participants, especially Huxley, and from the subject matter itself (reminiscent of stories of sea serpents and other abyssal curiosities). But there is also a grave aspect, manifested in the immense efforts expended on laboratory investigations, ocean dredgings, and publications in scientific journals, all in behalf of a nonexistent organism. Loren Eiseley has called Bathybius "one of the most peculiar and fantastic errors ever committed in the name of science."3 At first sight it may seem strange that some of the most distinguished biologists of the nineteenth century should have been allied with such a "fantastic" error. Professor Eiseley claims it to be "the product of an over-confident materialism, a vainglorious assumption that the secrets of life were about to be revealed."4 This analysis is incomplete, however, for it lays the blame on a philosophical predisposition while ignoring the unique sequences of events in several scientific disciplines whose timely convergence made Bathybius"'discovery" possible. Bathybiuswas simultaneously a candidate for the lowliest form of protozoologi- cal life, the elemental unit of cytology, the evolutionary precursor of all higher organisms, the first organic form in the fossil record, a major constituent of modern marine sediments, and a source of food for higher life forms in the otherwise nutrient-poor deep oceans. Among biological entities Bathybius was probably unsurpassed in the variety of scientific specialties from which confirmation seemed forthcoming. Its eventual refutation came from outside this group of specialties, from the knowledge and techniques of chemical analysis. The present study attempts to trace out the full course of Bathybius' birth, development, and demise, emphasizing the complex milieu of scientific theories which allowed the "organism" its brief existence. PRENATAL CONDITIONS OF BATHYBIUS The idea that life on earth arose originally in the sea is one of the oldest speculations of natural history. Variations on this theme appear in the philosophy of the Milesian Anaximander5 and more recently in the speculative biology of the NaturphilosopheLorenz Oken (1779-1851). Oken believed that life began as a primitive mucous substance which evolved from inorganic constituents existing in shallow marine waters. He equated the individual vesicles of this mucus with the smallest organisms known at the time, the infusoria. All other 2E.g., Susan Hubbard, "Beer, Bologna and Bathybius," Oceans, 1969, I(No. 3):23-26. 'Loren Eiseley, The Imm itseJourney (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), pp. 34-35. 4 Ibid. The prevalence of this spirit of the maturity of science in the latter half of the nineteenth century has been discussed in a suggestive essay by Lawrence Badash, "The Completeness of Nineteenth-Century Science," Isis, 1972, 63:48-58. 5John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy(3rd ed., London: A. C. Black, 1920), pp. 7071. This content downloaded from 150.135.114.195 on Wed, 15 May 2013 17:26:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 506 PHILIP F. REHBOCK organisms, according to Oken, were made up of, were "metamorphoses" of, these infusoria.6 Oken's writings, though mystical in tone and erroneous in many details, were strikingly anticipatory of later developments in biology, including the cell theory of Schleiden and Schwann and the protoplasm theory which followed it.7 The early history of these theories has been well described elsewhere.8 For present purposes it should be recalled that by mid-century the initial conception of the cell, a unit characterized by a definite boundary or cell wall, was being questioned and new light was being cast on the nature of the cell's contents. Franz Unger's demonstration of the identity of the cell substances of plants ("sarcode") and animals ("protoplasm") in 1850 initiated an era of intensive protoplasmic research. The decade of the 1860s witnessed the most intensive investigations and speculations about protoplasm. Two events of particular interest marked the beginning and the end of this decade. In 1861 the German microscopist Max Schultze (1821-1874) published his essay "Uber Muskelk6rperchen und dass was man eine Zelle zu nennen habe,"9 in which he described his examination of membraneless protoplasm in marine invertebrates. Schultze's work convinced most scientists that the truly essential portion of the cell was not its outer membrane but its contents, the protoplasm and nucleus.'0 And in 1868 T. H. Huxley, by then a protoplasm devotee himself, placed the protoplasmic theory before the public in his famous lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life." "' Huxley's lecture generated much interest because, along with his strong support of the protoplasmic theory and its physicochemical basis, he brought serious criticisms against both vitalists and positivists. 12 In his espousal of protoplasm Huxley failed to mention, however, that in an earlier essay he 6Lorenz Oken, The Elenents of Physiophilosophy,trans. Alfred Tulk (London: Ray Society, 1847), pp. 185-189. The 1st German ed. (Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie) appeared in 1809. See also Lorenz Oken, Die Zeugung (Bamberg: Joseph Anton Goebhardt, 1805), p. 2. 7Oken pointed out these relationships himself in the preface to the 3rd ed. of his Lehrbuch (1847), pp. xi-xii. 8See John R. Baker, "The Cell Theory: A Restatement, History and Critique," Q. J. Micros. Sci., 1948-1955, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96; William Coleman, "Cell, Nucleus, and Inheritance: An Historical Study," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1965, 109:124-158; Gerald L.
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