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Haeckel... again (aka 'poor creationists')

tas8831

Well-Known Member
He was a bit bizarro. I am not so sure about the dishonest claims. His duplicated images were there in the first edition due to publication pressure and were corrected in later editions. His conclusion that evolution was reproduced as an embryo develops was quite bizarre. It smacked more of magic than of science.
He also explained what modifications he had made in the first edition of his book - he removed the yolk sacs for clarity and scaled them all to be roughly the same size and (if I recall correctly) 'straightened out' some of them.
 

tas8831

Well-Known Member
And a paste from that other thread, in regard to a list of supposed sources using Haeckel's drawings and not claiming Haeckel's ideas to be false and/or using them as support for evolution:

So then surely you can show us an example of Haeckel's drawings being used in textbooks TODAY as support for either Haeckel's ideas or the ToE.

Let me see...

I have:

Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (Sinauer, 1998)

It is in my hands right now.

index...
Haeckel, Ernst, 728
on embryology and evolution,651, 652

p. 651
No drawings OR pictures.
"Darwin declared in a letter to the botanist Asa Gray that "embryologyis to me by far the strongest single class of facts in favor of a change of forms," and his followers, especially Ernst Haeckel, used embryological similarities as a major source of evidence for phylogenetic relationships."

p. 652
No drawings OR pictures
Section titled "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"
"...in 1866 he (Haeckel) issued his famous BIOGENETIC LAW: "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." By this, Haeckel meant that in the course of its development, an individual successively passes through the adult forms of all of its ancestors..."
"But by the end of the 19th century, it was already clear that the law seldom holds. The real development of organisms differs in several different ways from Haeckel's simple scheme..."

On p. 653 there is a rendering of similar embryos - but the caption indicates that it is in reference to von Baer's law, not Haeckel's, and that the drawing is from Romanes (1901), not Haeckel, and explains that 'all vertebrate classes share many common features early in development...'

Which is true.

p. 728
Sole mention of Haeckel:

"... Ernst Haeckel in Germany and Thomas Huxley in England, described evidence for common ancestry with the apes."

That is it.​


When confronted with this refutation, the creationist that presented it dismissed it all and merely replied that he had 'made his point'...
 
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