The following is an abridgement of “Goethe’s Plant Morphology: The Seeds of Evolution,” by Tanya Kelley.
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) provided the seeds for the theory of evolution.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) wrote,
“Jean and Lamarck and Wolfgang Goethe stand at the head of all the great philosophers of nature who first established a theory of organic development, and who are the illustrious fellow workers of Darwin.”
Goethe’s theory of plant morphology provides a link between the discontinuous view of nature, as exemplified in works of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), and the continuous view of nature, as exemplified in the work of the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
