Full metadata
Title
Lessons from embryos: Haeckel's embryo drawings, evolution, and secondary biology textbooks
Description
In 1997, developmental biologist Michael Richardson compared his research team's embryo photographs to Ernst Haeckel's 1874 embryo drawings and called Haeckel's work noncredible.Science soon published <“>Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,<”> and Richardson's comments further reinvigorated criticism of Haeckel by others with articles in The American Biology Teacher, <“>Haeckel's Embryos and Evolution: Setting the Record Straight <”> and the New York Times, <“>Biology Text Illustrations more Fiction than Fact.<”> Meanwhile, others emphatically stated that the goal of comparative embryology was not to resurrect Haeckel's work. At the center of the controversy was Haeckel's no-longer-accepted idea of recapitulation. Haeckel believed that the development of an embryo revealed the adult stages of the organism's ancestors. Haeckel represented this idea with drawings of vertebrate embryos at similar developmental stages. This is Haeckel's embryo grid, the most common of all illustrations in biology textbooks. Yet, Haeckel's embryo grids are much more complex than any textbook explanation. I examined 240 high school biology textbooks, from 1907 to 2010, for embryo grids. I coded and categorized the grids according to accompanying discussion of (a) embryonic similarities (b) recapitulation, (c) common ancestors, and (d) evolution. The textbooks show changing narratives. Embryo grids gained prominence in the 1940s, and the trend continued until criticisms of Haeckel reemerged in the late 1990s, resulting in (a) grids with fewer organisms and developmental stages or (b) no grid at all. Discussion about embryos and evolution dropped significantly.
Date Created
2014
Contributors
- Wellner, Karen L (Author)
- Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor)
- Ellison, Karin D. (Committee member)
- Creath, Richard (Committee member)
- Robert, Jason S. (Committee member)
- Laubichler, Manfred D. (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
xii, 223 p. : ill. (some col.)
Language
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.24948
Statement of Responsibility
by Karen L. Wellner
Description Source
Retrieved on July 22, 2014
Level of coding
full
Note
Partial requirement for: Ed.D., Arizona State University, 2014
Note type
thesis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-223)
Note type
bibliography
Field of study: Biology
System Created
- 2014-06-09 02:10:39
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:35:08
- 2 years 7 months ago
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