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Article ID: CBB001510243

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

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Volume: 37, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 17-33
Publication date: 2015
Language: English

DOI: 10.1007/s40656-014-0052-8

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

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Embryology Human physiology Germ theory of disease Aesthetics 18th century Wolff, Caspar Friedrich Pander, Christian Heinrich Baer, Karl Ernst von

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

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