Richard Owen's Vertebrate Archetype Author(s): Nicolaas A. Rupke Source: Isis, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 231-251 Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/236233 Accessed: 12-11-2015 09:35 UTC 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]. History of Science Society and University of Chicago Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 150.135.211.246 on Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:35:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Richard Owen's Vertebrate Archetype By Nicolaas A. Rupke* THE VERTEBRATE ARCHETYPE (from the Greek arkhe, "original," and tupos, "imprinted image") is one of the most fascinating constructs of what has been called the "morphological period" in the history of biology (approximately 1800- 1860). It represented the fullest expression of a belief in the fundamental relatedness, if not of all organisms, at least of all animals with endoskeletons. Moreover, as Darwin scholars have long recognized, the vertebrate archetype provided a direct stepping-stone to the notion of evolutionary ancestors.' To us, the concept of an archetype has echoes from Plato's theory of ideas to Carl Jung's notion of pervasive cultural symbols in our collective unconscious. During the late nineteenth century a theory of archetypeswas introducedinto Old Testamentphilology, too, by the Gottingen theologian Paul Anton de Lagarde, who maintained that all manuscripts of the He- brew Bible go back to a single, authoritative text from the early part of the second century A.D. In mid-Victorian times, however, the archetype notion above all connoted ver- tebrate morphology and was closely associated with Richard Owen's book On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (Figure 1). In fact, the ver- tebrate archetype is Owen's most enduring and most widely acknowledged claim to fame. It formed the centerpiece of his homological research program, embodying his synthesis of biological theory in which organic structures were explained pri- marily by their morphological relationships, and only secondarily by their functions. Owen's On the Archetype was the fruit of his work on the catalogue of the os- teological collections in the Hunterian Museum. His systematic classification and interpretationof the vast amount of skeletal material at his disposal, not only in the Hunterian collections but also in those of other British and Continental museums, represented the culmination of the morphological tradition, at least in osteology, and * History of Ideas Program, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. I warmly thank Roy M. MacLeod, Renato G. Mazzolini, John A. Passmore, and Phillip R. Sloan for their constructive suggestions. ' The designation "morphological period" was introduced in J. V. Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Joh. Maller und Charl. Darwin (Munich, 1872), pp. 573-726. It was given wider currency in J. T. Merz, A History of European Scientific Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1904; New York: Dover, 1965), Vol. 2, pp. 200-275. On the vertebrate archetype as a stepping-stone see, e.g., Dov Ospovat, The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Se- lection, 1838-1859 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 146-148. Isis, 1993, 84: 231-251 (C1993 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/93/8401-0001$0 1.00 231 This content downloaded from 150.135.211.246 on Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:35:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 232 NICOLAAS A. RUPKE 2 Figure 1. RichardOwen (1804-1892). Lithograph(1850) by T. H. Maguire.(Courtesy Wellcome InstituteLibrary, London.) drew on the type-concept work of both an older and a contemporary generation of colleagues. Significant in Owen's intellectual development was, for example, Georges Cuvier's notion of four basic types, and also Karl Ernst von Baer's belief in four basic developmental plans. In Britain, Martin Barry was an early advocate of the ".4unityof type." In his book Owen discussed in extenso the connections of his work with that of many of his predecessors. In the secondary literature, too, these con- nections have been examined,2 and in some detail as early as E. S. Russell's classic Form and Function (1 916). By now, the morphology of Owen's vertebrate archetype and its importance for his definition of "analogy" versus "homology" are to a large extent familiar ground; the purpose of this paper is not to go over it again but, instead, to examine the interpretationOwen placed upon his archetype "discovery." Leading up to and facilitating this examination is a discussion of two further, supposedly Owenian features of the vertebrate archetype, namely, the term and the figure. Thus the following questions will be addressed: Where lay the origins of the anatomical use of the term archetype, where those of the visual representation of the archetypal vertebrate, and where those of its philosophical interpretation as a 2 See, e.g., Bernard Balan's impressive L'ordre et le temps: L'anatomie comparee et l'histoire des vivants au XIXe siecle (Paris: Vrin, 1979). This content downloaded from 150.135.211.246 on Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:35:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RICHARD OWEN'S VERTEBRATE ARCHETYPE 233 Platonic idea? Moreover, was there a sociopolitical motive behind Owen's formu- lation of a vertebrate archetype? Is Adrian Desmond right in arguing that Owen's Platonist archetype affirmed an upper-class belief in noble ancestry and that it was constructed to wrest control of morphology from a group of materialist radicals who advocated the notion of evolutionary ancestors because this notion meshed well with their plebeian origins?3 Several of Owen's projects were patronized by a circle of Oxbridge friends who advocated a functionalist epistemology. This, after all, strengthened the Paleyan de- sign argument of natural theology. By contrast, the archetype work and, more com- prehensively, Owen's homological research program took place in the context of a group of London colleagues educated in Edinburgh. These men looked to the Con- tinent for innovative approaches, and they borrowed a formalist epistemology that had become popular among the German Romantic naturalists. Whereas the gener- ation of Buffon and Linnaeus had been primarily concerned with the description and classification of individual species, the Romantic naturalists sought to establish the relatedness of organic forms and to express this in the delineation of one or more morphological types. The different schools and research programs, such as the Kant- ian Gottingen school and the Schelling-influenced Jena school, shared a belief in the importance of mind and mental ideas that transcend empirical reality and constitute the unifying principles or logic behind nature's phenomena.4 This infusion of Ro- mantic, idealist belief into the study of early nineteenth-century biology produced what has been called "transcendentalmorphology." In its most mundane form, this was the belief that organic diversity, as present in the myriad of different species, can be subsumed under one or a few ideal types. The archetype notion merged Ow- en's work with these contemporary currents of idealist philosophy and weakened his link with Oxbridge natural theology.5 Although Owen published on the ideal vertebra as early as 1840 (the paper was delivered in 1838), no fully fledged definition of an archetypal skeleton was pre- sented to the public until a series of publications that began with a two-part report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), delivered on 17 and 21 September 1846. The first part was entitled "On the Homologies of the Bones Collectively Called 'Temporal' in Human Anatomy," the second "On the Vertebrate Structure of the Skull." There is no evidence that Owen used the word archetype in delivering his report; in the sense of an abstract anatomical plan, the term appeared for the first time in Owen's writings in the published version of the two-part BAAS report, entitled "On the Archetype and Homologies of the VertebrateSkeleton" (1847). Until then-for example, in Lectures on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of 3See Adrian Desmond, Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London, 1850-1875 (London: Blond, 1982), p. 202 and passim; and Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1989), p. 216 and passim. 4 See Timothy Lenoir, "The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Naturphilo- sophie in the Romantic Era," Studies in History of Biology, 1981, 5:111-205. The Jena school has not yet received the same scholarly attention. ' On transcendental morphology in Britain see Philip F. Rehbock, The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology (Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1983). The clash between "function" and "form" in Paris is well described in Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987). This content downloaded from 150.135.211.246 on Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:35:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 234 NICOLAAS A. RUPKE Vertebrate Animals, some of which were delivered as late as 1846-he used the expressions general type and fundamental type.6 Nor did the BAAS report of 1847 contain the actual sketch of the vertebrate archetype.