Book contents
- Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology
- The Systematics Association Special Volume Series
- Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A History of Narrative Phylogenetics
- 2 From Archetypes to Ancestors
- 3 The Emergence of Lineage Thinking
- 4 Ernst Haeckel’s Evolutionary Storytelling
- 5 The Epistemic Rise of Hypothetical Ancestors
- 6 Intuiting Evolution
- 7 Telling Straight Stories with Fossils
- 8 Seeing Animal Ancestors in Embryos
- 9 Ancestral Attractions and Phylogenetic Folklore
- 10 Narrative Shortcuts and Phylogenetic Faux Pas
- 11 Taxic Distortions of Lineage Thinking
- 12 Making Sense with Stories
- References
- Index
- Systematics Association Special Volumes
2 - From Archetypes to Ancestors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2022
- Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology
- The Systematics Association Special Volume Series
- Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A History of Narrative Phylogenetics
- 2 From Archetypes to Ancestors
- 3 The Emergence of Lineage Thinking
- 4 Ernst Haeckel’s Evolutionary Storytelling
- 5 The Epistemic Rise of Hypothetical Ancestors
- 6 Intuiting Evolution
- 7 Telling Straight Stories with Fossils
- 8 Seeing Animal Ancestors in Embryos
- 9 Ancestral Attractions and Phylogenetic Folklore
- 10 Narrative Shortcuts and Phylogenetic Faux Pas
- 11 Taxic Distortions of Lineage Thinking
- 12 Making Sense with Stories
- References
- Index
- Systematics Association Special Volumes
Summary
In this chapter I trace the origin of the idea of evolutionary ancestors back to pre-evolutionary archetype concepts in the thinking of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Richard Owen. Ancestors and archetypes were both used to explain unity of type, homology, and the origins of organismal form, but due to their metaphysical dissimilarity, they achieved this in fundamentally different ways. The archetypal thinking of these authors each illuminates a distinctive aspect of this explanatory strategy. I also diagnose and defuse a modern myth that has arisen about the views of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which claims that he thought that the ventral surface of arthropods corresponds to the dorsal surface of vertebrates. When Darwin reinterpreted the archetype as an ancestor, evolutionary storytelling became possible, with hypothetical ancestors becoming the central subjects in phylogenetic narratives. But the emergence of ancestors as actors in evolutionary stories also required reconceptualizing the systematic relationships between taxa to provide pathways along which evolutionary stories could flow.
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- Ancestors in Evolutionary BiologyLinear Thinking about Branching Trees, pp. 8 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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