Transcendental anatomy
Form of comparative anatomy / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transcendental anatomy, also known as philosophical anatomy, was a form of comparative anatomy that sought to find ideal patterns and structures common to all organisms in nature.[1] The term originated from naturalist philosophy in the German provinces, and culminated in Britain especially by scholars Robert Knox and Richard Owen, who drew from Goethe and Lorenz Oken.[1] From the 1820s to 1859, it persisted as the medical expression of natural philosophy before the Darwinian revolution.[2]
Amongst its various definitions, transcendental anatomy has four main tenets:
- the presupposition of an Ideal Plan among the multiplicity of visible structures in the animal and plant kingdom, and that the Plan determines function
- the Ideal Plan acted as a force for the maintenance of anatomical uniformity (as opposed to diversity-inducing forces of Nature)
- the belief that this a priori Plan was discoverable
- the desire to discover universal Laws underlying anatomical differences.[3]