Haeckel, Ernst. The Riddle of the Universe. London: Watts & Co., 1900. Translated from the original 1899 German, Die Welträthsel, by Joseph McCabe. With glossary.

What are you reading!

I heard Ernst Haeckel invented the word ecology (among many biological terms). I’ve never checked that out, but remember this for later.

He was a promoter of Darwinism in Germany but many in anglophone may know his name more from his scientific illustrations and as an influence on the Art Nouveau movement . See Kunstformen der Natur.

Haeckel on free will:

“…it is a pure dogma” page 13

“The great struggle between the determinist and the indeterminist, between the opponent and the sustainer of the freedom of the will, has ended today, after more than 2000 years, completely in favour of the determinist.” page 194

He is at the high point of the clockwork universe, even if the clockmaker is a romantic automatic-writing impresario that Nietzsche might enjoyed reading…—strange.

For also compare:

“No common problem is solved, or even advanced, by the cerebral function we call emotion.” page 14

Obviously he has never heard of social learning.

I guess categories blind us even as they help us perceive imaginary differences (races) and illusionary similarities (phylogeny recapitulates phylogeny).

Curiously, in several dimensions, he was a promoter of Social Darwinism, and developer of racial categories and eugenicist, and a supporter of a dictatorial state, but his works were banned by the Nazi regime  as he opposed antisemitism, while supporting atheism, feminism, internationalism, youthful pacifism and so on. (Nazis didn’t like Darwinian thought BTW… — and some say Haeckel was more Lamarckian in temper than Darwinian. Some say a Nazi, while some Nazis say no!)

In terms of evolution~morality we got a science essay book on scientific development during his lifetime and compared to various past 'worldings' (to use my term), and it is based on a materialist and determinist viewpoints (called Monism by Haeckel). 

Anyways, on a Dawkins Atheist Hardness Scale we might give Ernst Haeckel an 11 or an 11+.

Why are you reading this?

My reason for picking this book up and reading it has more to do with Haeckel’s neologising of word ecology I mentioned at the top. Remember that?

When I met my wife for the second time she had begun a doctorate in ecology, on the effects of disturbance on coastal heathlands to be specific. And it transpired that Mona was some sort of grandniece of the Lutheran theologian Friedrich Loofs who wrote a book called Anti-Haeckel. I have copies of that book to read (in English and the original German) but have been meaning to read Haeckel before the Anti, for quite some time. And this week was the week a copy turned up.

So I was hoping for some sort of aside or mention or something, but given that Loofs’ anti-book is a bit of a reply to Haeckel’s Die Welträthsel it was going to be unlikely. Obviously. Haeckel unloads early on the indefensible Papists, yes, but on Protestants only as an afterthought of a side swipe, for the book is really structured around a lecture in Berlin by Emil du Bois-Reymond and his “seven great puzzles” which activated the 66-year-old Haeckel to get a response together.

For the record the seven great puzzles are:

1. the ultimate nature of matter and force;

2. the origin of motion;

3. the origin of life;

4. the "apparently teleological arrangements of nature"

5. the origin of simple sensations

6. the origin of intelligent thought and language; and

7. the question of free will.

See also wikipedia for Welträthsel/world-puzzles/universal riddles.

My own positions on this, and du Bois-Reymond proclamations of "Ignorabimus" ("we will never know") or "Dubitemus" ("we doubt it'), is that we will thrown stuff into the…—gap like we always do, and do it proudly, unnwisely—…and survive anyway. Social learning carries us through, producing outcomes like

culture/society/morality/ethics/religion/art/performative-rites

along the way, as we each urge ourselves, each and every, to self in the world of others doing the selfsame thing.

One thing for later here is that reading Haeckel, on what it is that is alive in being alive, makes me think again about alignment, and now in reference to 'trajectory'. Because of textual reminders of Henri Bergson no doubt, another late Victorian.

Haeckel, Ernst. The Riddle of the Universe. London: Watts & Co., 1900. Translated from the original 1899 German, Die Welträthsel, by Joseph McCabe. With glossary.

Loofs, Friedrich. —
Anti-Haeckel. Eine Replik Nebst Beilagen. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1900. 
Anti-Haeckel. An Exposure of Haeckel`s Views of Christianity. Translated by H. R. Mackintosh. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1903. Christian Defence Series.

Part of the Reactions to papers/books on evolution~morality series. Crossposted on substack.com