A bridge-builder: Wolf-Ernst Reif and the Darwinisation of German paleontology

Abstract

Wolf-Ernst Reif was an outstanding German paleontologist, who, along with his empirical studies (biomechanics, functional and constructional morphology, etc.), paid significant attention to theoretical issues and the history of his discipline. Reif was a bridge-builder, skillfully synthesising history, theory and empirical studies within German-language paleontology. This paper briefly discusses sophisticated relationships between German paleontology and Darwinism based on the historical studies of Wolf-Ernst Reif. German paleontology did not fully embrace Darwinism until the 1970s. There are several reasons for this. First, alternative evolutionary theories (saltationism, neo-Lamarckism, orthogenesis) occupied a significant segment of the theoretical landscape in the German life sciences. Second, typological thinking persisted in German paleontology after the Second World War. Third, German paleontologists were relatively uninterested in discussing mechanisms of evolution, concentrating instead on reconstructing phylogenetic history.

Keywords:

• Darwinism
• German paleontology
• synthetic theory of evolution
• Wolf-Ernst Reif

Acknowledgements

Support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ho 2143, 9–2) for our research on the history of evolutionary biology is gratefully acknowledged. We are thankful to Roger D.K. Thomas for many valuable suggestions. Michael Markert was instrumental in developing visual images.

Notes

^1. One of us (Hoßfeld) was Reif's co-author.

^2. We do not claim that Germany was the only country in which paleontology and Darwinism were in a sophisticated relationship. We claim, however, that it is possible to explain the specific situation in Germany.

^3. The adjective ‘German’ is employed here to refer to any work done in the German language or by citizens of nations where use of this language predominates.

^4. Swedish biologists were under German influence to a significant extent. The resistance to Darwinism in Sweden was remarkably strong and persistent (for more details, see Olsson 2005).

^5. This approach is known as Geoffroyism (after E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1772–1844).

^6. Typology is an empirically based methodology that asserts the primacy of structure over function. It sees organisms as structural phenomena to be ordered in logical schemes in accord with their morphological features.

^7. ‘Old’ in the sense of pre-Darwinian.

^8. We are thankful to Roger D.K. Thomas for this phrasing.

^9. The ‘Phylogenetic Symposium’ (1956 to until today) was founded as an annual event by Curt Kosswig (1903–1982), Wolf Herre (1909–1997) and Adolf Remane (Kraus and Hoßfeld 1998).