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Ernst Haeckel and the philosophy of sponges

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Abstract

Nearly 150 years ago, Ernst Haeckel published a three volume monograph on the calcareous sponges. These volumes contained the results of his extensive investigation of the anatomy, reproduction, and development of these marine invertebrate organisms. This paper discusses how Haeckel’s contribution to spongiology was so distinct from that of earlier writers on the natural history of sponges, by focusing on his “philosophy of sponges.” This included “an analytic” proof of Darwin’s theory of descent, an argument for the monophyletic origin of the Metazoa from an ancient sponge-like embryo (the “gastraea theory”), and proof of the philosophy of monism that humans are no different than lowly sponges in their perfectly natural and material origins according to the laws of ontogeny in a universe devoid of supernatural beings or purpose. Haeckel was a philosopher using the methods of natural science. He was also a gifted artist—as his illustrations attest—and like most artists he disliked criticism of his creations, including his theoretical work. His observations and speculations regarding sponges (and certainly his more philosophical conclusions drawn therefrom) were and continue to be criticized, but as a review of the current literature shows, Haeckel’s imprint on sponge biology is still very evident.

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Fig. 1

Figure 9 is adapted from Haeckel (1872), III, Tafel I, Fig. 1. Figure 10 originally appeared in Haeckel (1872), III, Tafel II as Fig. 17

Fig. 2

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Notes

  1. “Auguries of Innocence”, Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguries_of_Innocence] accessed July 18, 2018.

  2. Sponges are in fact able to respond to external stimuli in subtle but observable ways, for instance, by closing their pores upon being touched (Brusca and Brusca 194–196).

  3. See (Stott 2003) for an account of Darwin’s initiation into marine invertebrate biology under the tutelage of Grant, the “sponge doctor.”

  4. With the exception of members of the family Cladorhizidae, which trap and envelop their prey with tentacle-like structures (Brusca and Brusca 2003, 194–195).

  5. Haeckel distinguished polymorphosis from polymorphism (the occurrence of differentiated and specialized forms of organs and persons within a single individual organism or colony of organisms, e.g., the siphonophorae, which arises through a division of labor among the parts). By polymorphosis, Haeckel referred to the great variability of morphology of outer form observed among individuals of one and the same species, or a polymorphism without any division of labor (Haeckel 1872, 480). This is more frequently today called phenotypic plasticity.

  6. Rudolf Leuckart in 1847 introduced the term Coelenterata to denote invertebrate animals with a single opening into the gastrovascular cavity functioning as both mouth and anus. Haeckel preferred the older term Zoophyta and for the purposes of this paper the two will be used interchangably.

  7. Ironically, osculum is Latin for “little mouth.”

  8. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Haeckel speaks here of experience (Erfahrung) rather than observation (Beobachtung), but modern philosophical discussions of epistemology in English typically draw the distinction between observation and theory or sensation and thought. At first glance Haeckel seems to be making the Kantian claim that there is no perception without conception or that all observation is theory-laden; but in reality, he does not seem to be denying the possibility of pure observations (blosses Erfahren) but that science requires the conscious and therefore voluntary intellectual reflection upon pure observations.

  9. Nyhart (1995) and Gliboff (2008) discuss the emphasis on wissenschaftliche Zoologie in the German context of the 18th and 19th centuries, indicated in part by the move of instruction in zoology out of the medical faculties into the philosophical faculty and its gradual recognition as an autonomous Wissenschaft in its own right. Haeckel was himself appointed the first full professor of zoology, and in the philosophical faculty, at the University of Jena in 1865.

  10. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8114,” accessed on 8 April 2018, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-8114.

  11. I draw out this point because ‘analytic’ means something quite different in the context of Kantian philosophy.

  12. Bronn (1800–1862) had made this criticism in the final chapter of his translation of The Origin of Species, see Bronn (1860).

  13. Haeckel (1872, II, 38). G. blanca is now accepted as Clathrina Gray, 1867 according to the World Porifera database. http://www.marinespecies.org/porifera/porifera.php?p=taxdetails&id=192734#sources. Accessed Aug. 10 2018.

  14. Grant (1825a) had similarly spoken of the osculum as a ‘fecal pore’ and a ‘mouth,’ without however claiming that the water current ever entered through the osculum.

  15. The other animal phyla are all triploblastic, having a middle germ layer (mesoderm) derived from either or both the endoderm and exoderm. Haeckel was building here on the earlier work of T. H. Huxley, Fritz Mueller, Nicolai Kleinenberg, and Alexander Kowalevsky who had identified the presence of the germ layers (first described in vertebrates) in jellyfish, crustaceans, hydra and, the amphioxus, respectively. See Hall (1998).

  16. It is not at all clear that this syllogism is valid (assuming Haeckel intended the third line to be a conclusion drawn from the first two), but it would seem to follow from this set of statements that ‘All philosophy is science’!.

  17. “Die Frage aller Fragen fuer die Menschheit, die Frage von der Stellung des Menschen in der Natur” (Haeckel 1872, I, 67). Bath sponges are in fact the dead remains of a demosponge, whose skeletons consist of a fibrous and “spongy” network of collagen proteins, quite unlike that of the sharp flinty spicules of calcareous or siliceous sponges.

  18. Gliboff (2008, 181) also discusses the broader significance of the empirical study of the calcareous sponges for what he called Haeckel’s “sponge philosophy”, i.e. his mechanistic monism.

  19. This line is from an English translation of an excerpt of Die Kalkschwämme. In the original Haeckel wrote “The biogeny of the calcareous sponges is a coherent proof for the truth of Monism” (Haeckel 1872 I, 483). The final line of the first volume (Biologie der Kalkschwämme) says, in reference to the development of the calcareous sponges, that “This explains most clearly the high significance of the calcispongiae for the monistic philosophy” (Haeckel 1872, 484).

  20. Ereskovsky and Dondua (2006), Ereskovsky (2007) and Nakanishi et al. (2014). Leys and Eerkes-Medrano (2005) offer a contrary opinion partially vindicating Haeckel’s account of sponge development. Comparative analysis of a draft sequencing of the genome of the demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica suggests that sponges evolved from an earlier animal ancestor of much greater genetic complexity than previously suspected (Srivastava et al (2010)). See Breidbach (2006) for a historical and critical review of Haeckel’s gastraea theory in light of modern scientific evidence.

  21. Nielsen proposes that the first step toward eumetazoans occurred when the larval stage of a sponge ancestor achieved sexual maturity in a process called dissogony, thereby abandoning the sessile lifestyle of the adult sponge form (Nielsen 2008), 248–249.

  22. For more historical and scientific analysis of the gastraea theory and the theory of recapitulation see Hoßfeld and Olsson (2003), Laubichler and Maienschein (2007) and Levit et al. (2015).

  23. See Rieppel (2016) for an extensive evaluation of Haeckel’s approach to taxonomy as well as the broader philosophical issues (e.g., his monism) treated in this paper.

  24. Haeckel failed, however, to recognize the widely accepted division of the Calcarea into the subclasses Calcinea and Calcoronea, as suggested by Minchin (1896).

  25. Klautau et al (2013) introduce the new genus of sponge in the order Clathrinida, named Ernstia. For explanation see Collins (2013).

  26. Others have made this point, e.g., Junker and Hoßfeld (2001), 124; Richards (2008), 303–312, 331–341; and Hopwood (2015).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Brian Hall and Nick Hopwood each for clarifying some details about the various processes of gastrulation across the animal phyla for me and to Christie MacNeil (the digital archivist at the Beaton Institute of Cape Breton University) for locating and preparing the illustrations for Figs. 1 and 2.

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    Andrew S. Reynolds

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This article is a contribution to the Special Issue Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919): The German Darwin and his impact on modern biology—Guest Editors: U. Hossfeld, G. S. Levit, U. Kutschera.

To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of nature’s works he may learn the greatest lessons. The fall of an apple to the ground may raise his thoughts to the laws which govern the revolutions of the planets in their orbits. John Herschel section 9 Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830).

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Reynolds, A.S. Ernst Haeckel and the philosophy of sponges. Theory Biosci. 138, 133–146 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-019-00286-2

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