Article ID: CBB001510243

Folding into Being: Early Embryology and the Epistemology of Rhythm (2015)

unapi

Wellmann, Janina (Author)


History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Volume: 37, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 17-33


Publication Date: 2015
Edition Details: Part of a Series: Temporalities of Reproduction
Language: English

Historians have often described embryology and concepts of development in the period around 1800 in terms of temporalization or “dynamization”. This paper, in contrast, argues that a central epistemological category in the period was “rhythm”, which played a major role in the establishment of the emerging discipline of biology. I show that Caspar Friedrich Wolff's epigenetic theory of development was based on a rhythmical notion, namely the hypothesis that organic development occurs as a series of ordered rhythmical repetitions and variations. Presenting Christian Heinrich Pander's and Karl Ernst von Baer's theory of germ layers, I argue that Pander and Baer regarded folding as an organizing principle of ontogenesis, and that the principle's explanatory power stems from their understanding of folding as a rhythmical figuration. In a brief discussion of the notion of rhythm in contemporary music theory, I identify an underlying physiological epistemology in the new musical concept of rhythm around 1800. The paper closes with a more general discussion of the relationship between the rhythmic episteme, conceptions of life, and aesthetic theory at the end of the eighteenth century.

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Article Bock von Wülfingen, Bettina; Brandt, Christina; Lettow, Susanne; Vienne, Florence (2015) Temporalities of Reproduction: Practices and Concepts from the Eighteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (pp. 1-16). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001510243/

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Authors & Contributors
Roe, Shirley A.
Brauckmann, Sabine
Rust, Joshua
Bognon-Küss, Cécilia
Demarest, Boris
Wouters, Arno G.
Concepts
Embryology
Biology
Scientific illustration
Epigenesis
Reproduction
Visual representation; visual communication
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
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