A representation of writer's block by Leonid Pasternak (1862–1945)
Writer's block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown.
Writer's block has various degrees of severity, from difficulty
in coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce work for
years. This condition is not solely measured by time passing without
writing, it is measured by time passing without productivity in the task
at hand. Writer's block has been an acknowledged problem throughout recorded history.
However, not until 1947 was the term writer's block coined by the Austrian psychiatrist Edmund Bergler.
All types of writers, including full-time professionals, academics,
workers of creative projects, and those trying to finish written
assignments, can experience writer's block.
The condition has many causes, some that are even unrelated to writing.
The majority of writer's block researchers agree that most causes of
writer's block have an affective/physiological, motivational, and
cognitive component.
Studies have found effective coping strategies to deal with writer's block. These strategies to remove the anxiety about writing range from ideas such as free writing and brainstorming to talking to a professional.
History
Throughout history, writer's block has been a documented problem. Professionals who have struggled with the affliction include authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joseph Mitchell, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and songwriter Adele. Early Romantic writers
did not understand much about the topic; they assumed writer's block
was due to a power that did not want them to write any more. It became
slightly more recognised during the time of French Symbolists (late 19th-century art movement) who had famously recognised poets that gave up writing early into their career because they were unable to find the language to convey their message. During the Great American Novel
period (mid-18th to mid-19th century), it was widely recognised as
something that would block a writer and cause them emotional
instability.
Research concerning this topic was done in the late 1970s and 1980s.
During this time, researchers were influenced by the Process and
Post-Process movements and therefore focused specifically on the
writer's processes. The condition was first described in 1947 by
Austrian psychoanalystEdmund Bergler, who described it as being caused by oral masochism, mothers that bottle fed, and an unstable private love life. The growing reputation of psychiatry in the United States made the term gain more recognition. However, some great writers may have already suffered from writer's block years before Bergler described it, such as Herman Melville, who stopped writing novels a few years after writing Moby-Dick.
Causes
Writer's block may have several causes. Some are creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration, or be distracted by other events. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert,
reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposed that such a
pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as "having"
genius rather than "being" a genius.
A fictional example can be found in George Orwell's novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, in which the protagonist Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem
describing a day in London: "It was too big for him, that was the
truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a
series of fragments."
Psychological disorder
It has been suggested that writer's block is more than just a mentality. Under stress, a human brain will "shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system".
The limbic system is associated with the instinctual processes, such as
"fight or flight" response; and behaviour that is based on "deeply
engrained training". The limited input from the cerebral cortex hinders a
person's creative processes, which is replaced by the behaviours
associated with the limbic system. The person is often unaware of the
change, which may lead them to believe they are creatively "blocked". In her 2004 book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, the writer and neurologistAlice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas.
Dr. Flaherty suggested in her writing that there are many diseases that
may impact one's ability to write. One of which she refers to is hypergraphia,
or the intensive desire to write. She points out that in this
condition, the patient's temporal lobe is afflicted, usually by damage,
and it may be the same changes in this area of the brain that can
contribute to writer's-blocking behaviours. Not to be confused with writer's block, agraphia
is a neurological disorder caused by trauma or stroke causing
difficulty in communicating through writing. Agraphia cannot be treated
directly, but it is possible to relearn certain writing abilities.
Brain trauma
Other
research identifies neurological malfunctions as a cause. Malcolm T.
Cunningham showed how these malfunctions can be linked to trauma both
mental and physical.
Physical damage can produce writer's block. If a person
experiences tissue damage in the brain, i.e. a stroke, it is likely to
lead to other complications apart from the lesion itself. This damage causes an extreme form of writer's block known as agraphia.
With agraphia, the inability to write is due to issues with the
cerebral cortex; this disables the brain's process of translating
thoughts into writing. Brain injuries are an example of a physical
illness that can cause a writer to be blocked. Other brain related
disorders and neurological disorders such as epilepsy have been known to
cause the problem of writer's block and hypergraphia, the strong urge
to write.
Writer anxiety and inhibition
Some
other causes of writer's block has been due to writer's anxiety.
Writer's anxiety is defined as being worried with one's words or
thought, thus experiencing writer's block.
For a composition perspective, Lawrence Oliver said in his
article "Helping Students Overcome Writer's Block": "Students receive
little or no advice on how to generate ideas or explore their thoughts,
and they usually must proceed through the writing process without
guidance or corrective feedback from the teacher, who withholds comments
and criticism until grading the final product." He said that students "learn to write by writing", and often they are insecure or paralyzed by rules.
Phyllis Koestenbaum wrote in her article "The Secret Climate the
Year I Stopped Writing" about her trepidation toward writing, claiming
it was tied directly to her instructor's response. She said, "I needed to write to feel, but without feeling I couldn't write."
In contrast to Koestenbaum's experience, Nancy Sommers stated that
papers do not end when students finish writing and that neither should
instructors' comments. She urges a "partnership" between writers and instructors so that responses become a conversation.
Student motivation
Herman
A. Estrin in his article "Motivation in Composition Writing" writes,
"When freshmen are assigned such topics for a research paper as...they
have no real background of the subject for an in-depth paper...they
prepare a mechanical, lifeless paper with no creativity, imagination, or
originality". According to him, freshman students write well about topics they are passionate about.
Aline Alves-Wold, in her article, "Assessing Writing Motivation: a
Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports" states that there is a
general lack of research on the motivation of students to write in the
first few years of education, which is problematic when one considers
how important initial experiences are in motivating students to write.
Success generally enhances one's belief in their efficacy, whereas
failure weakens them. "These mechanisms are particularly evident in
early phases of skill development where failure typically occurs before a
sense of efficacy has been firmly established. This implies that
children in their first years in school have writer self-beliefs that
are particularly malleable and dynamic". Writing development is therefore both enhanced and endangered during the first years in school.
Negative self-beliefs and feeling of incompetence
Mike Rose
stated that writer's block can be caused by a writer's history in
writing, rules and restrictions from the past. Writers can be hesitant
of what they write based on how it will be perceived by the audience.
Guangming Ling states that there is a negative correlation between
self-efficacy and avoidance goals in studies on writing apprehension and
writer's block, which suggests that having hesitations about writing
may lead to less effort and thus less success.
James Adams noted in his book Conceptual Blockbusting that
various reasons blocks occur include fear of taking a risk, "chaos" in
the pre-writing stage, judging versus generating ideas, an inability to
incubate ideas, or a lack of motivation.
In "Motivation in the Writing Centre: A Peer Tutor's Experience,"
Leonie Kirchoff states "The concept of 'amotivation' describes a lack
of motivation due to an individual's feeling of incompetence and
helplessness."
Demotivation is the process of reducing or diminishing motivational
basis for behavior or ongoing actions through external influences. An
external factor such as feedback may affect demotivation, whereas an
internal factor, such as pessimistic expectations, may cause
amotivation. Even so, both concepts have similar effects on writers.
Coping strategies
Irene Clark describes the following strategies for coping with writer's block: class and group discussion, journaling, free writing and brainstorming, clustering, list making, and engaging with the text. To overcome writing blocks, Oliver suggests asking writers questions to uncover their writing process. He then recommends solutions such as systematic questioning, free writing, and encouragement. A recent study of 2,500 writers aimed to find techniques that writers themselves use to overcome writer's block. The research discovered a range of solutions from altering the time of
day to write and setting deadlines to lowering expectations and using mindfulness meditation.
Garbriele Lusser Rico's concern with the mind links to brain lateralisation, also explored by Rose and Linda Flowers and John R. Hayes, among others. Rico's book, Writing the Natural Way
looks into invention strategies, such as clustering, which has been
noted to be an invention strategy used to help writers overcome their
blocks, and further emphasizes the solutions presented in works by Rose, Oliver, and Clark. Similar to Rico, James Adams discusses "right-brain" involvement in writing. While Bill Downey proposes that he is basing his approach in practical concerns,
his concentration on "right-brain" techniques speaks to cognitive
theory approach similar to Rico's and a more practical advice for
writers to approach their writer's block. Mike Rose mentions that peer tutors
provide supportive feedback so that blocked writers can feel secure in
sharing their problems and experimenting with new ideas about writing.
Writing environment
It
is also important to evaluate the environment in which the writing is
being produced to determine if it is the best condition to work in. One
must look into these different factors to determine if it is a good or
bad environment to work in.
Psychologists who have studied writer's block have concluded that it is
a treatable condition once the writer finds a way to remove anxiety and
build confidence in themselves.
Sarah Ahmed and Dominik Güss state that solutions for coping with
writer's block include using more efficient writing strategies during
the composing process, more effective goal-setting strategies, and even
brainstorming ideas with others.
Splitting the writing into smaller pieces
Research
has also shown that it is highly effective if one breaks their work
into pieces rather than doing all of their writing in one sitting, in
order to produce good quality work. While it can be helpful to split up
the writing process into pieces, Patricia Huston suggests that starting
with different sections of a paper, rather than trying to start with an
introduction, can be a useful strategy to cope with writer's block. She
points out that if a person is stuck on the introduction, they can try
moving onto a different section like a body paragraph. Huston states,
"There is no need to begin at the beginning and write an article in
sequence".
Free writing is a widely accepted technique for overcoming writer's block. Taught by Peter Elbow, free writing is similar to brainstorming but is written in prose form without stopping. To free-write one writes without pausing to think or edit, and one pours raw ideas onto paper.
Author Benjamin Solomon described the rationale for the technique:
"Writer's block is a rut, a ditch, a trap, a swampy mire, and in order
to lift yourself out, you need to DO something—anything!—to jog yourself
into motion."
Cherryl Armstrong, who worked with the South Coast Writing Project,
stated that one can free-write about anything, even a completely
different subject than one was going to write about: "any writing will
do".
Oliver claims that after free writing the writer is able to analyze
many ideas that might not have been generated before and develop a
clearer sense of what theme is trying to be communicated throughout the
writing.
Lawrence J. Oliver suggests that freewriting is another effective
method that has helped people deal with writer's block. This method
consists of writing down ideas or thoughts about a certain topic.
Freewriting doesn't focus on grammar or style. There is only one rule
for this method, and that is to keep on writing. Educators should also
never read students' freewriting unless asked to do so.
Mind mapping is suggested as another potential solution to writer's block.
The technique involves writing a stream of consciousness on a
horizontal piece of paper and connecting any similar or linked thoughts.
This exercise is intended to help a writer suffering from writer's
block to bypass the analytical or critical functioning of their brain
and access the creative functioning more directly, stimulating the flow
of ideas. Other techniques similar to clustering and mind mapping are the writing of notes on cards in a card file, and nonlinear electronic writing using hypertext.
Positive self-beliefs and encouragement
Camacho,
Alves and Boscolo wrote about enhancing students' writing motivation in
the classroom. She says that to foster students' positive self-beliefs
and beliefs about writing, teachers must nurture their self-beliefs as
well as their beliefs about the writing task.
Other techniques
Other ways to cope come from ideas such as The Brand Emotions Scale for Writers (BESW). Using the framework of the Differential Emotions Scale,
the BESW works with grouping emotions into either states or traits and
then classifying them as positive, negative passive, or negative active.
Researchers can assess subjects, giving writers a chance to get more
work done if left in the right emotional state since data suggests that
writers with positive emotions tended to express more than writers with
negative passive or negative active.
Anne Johnstone suggests a couple of strategies to help with
writer's block. When one finds oneself unable to generate content,
Johnstone suggests "recopying a well-liked piece" of one's own to help
generate ideas.
Johnstone states that individuals who are articulate orally but
struggle with writing and forming their ideas into sentences on paper
should try tape-recording themselves and later transcribing it onto
paper.
Writer's block and procrastination
are two similar issues that people struggle with when it comes to
writing. Writer's block is an issue that can cause people to delay their
goals and may prevent them from finishing writing projects. Although
writer's block and procrastination are not the exact same issue, they
can end up leading up to one another. Writer's block is not continuing
to do a task, and procrastination is delaying to start the task. In her
1987 Ph.D. thesis (published in 2012), Karen E. Peterson posited two
different scenarios on how procrastination and writer's block can lead
up to each other.
One scenario is that a person will procrastinate due to having the fear
of past experiences of getting writer's block when doing a task. The
other scenario is that a person will have writer's block because of the
feeling of being overwhelmed about needing to do a task at the last
minute after procrastinating for a long period of time.
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories
to be considered creative writing, even though it falls under
journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on
narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.
Creative writing can technically be considered any writing of originalcomposition. In this sense, creative writing is a more contemporary and process-oriented name for what has been traditionally called literature, including the variety of its genres. In her work, Foundations of Creativity, Mary Lee Marksberry references Paul Witty and Lou LaBrant's Teaching the People's Language to define creative writing. Marksberry notes:
Witty and LaBrant...[say creative
writing] is a composition of any type of writing at any time primarily
in the service of such needs as
the need for keeping records of significant experience,
the need for sharing experience with an interested group, and
the need for free individual expression which contributes to mental and physical health.
In academia
Unlike its academic counterpart of writing classes that teach students to compose work based on the rules of the language, creative writing is believed to focus on students' self-expression. While creative writing as an educational subject is often available at some stages, if not throughout, K–12 education, perhaps the most refined form of creative writing as an educational focus is in universities. Following a reworking of university education in the post-war
era, creative writing has progressively gained prominence in the
university setting. In the UK, the first formal creative writing program
was established as a Master of Arts degree at the University of East Anglia in 1970 by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. With the beginning of formal creative writing programs:
For the first time in the sad and
enchanting history of literature, for the first time in the glorious and
dreadful history of the world, the writer was welcome in the academic
place. If the mind could be honored there, why not the imagination?
Programs of study
Creative
Writing programs are typically available to writers from the high
school level all the way through graduate school/university and adult
education. Traditionally these programs are associated with the English
departments in the respective schools, but this notion has been
challenged in recent times as more creative writing programs have spun
off into their own department. Most Creative Writing degrees for
undergraduates in college are Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees (BFA).Some continue to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the terminal degree in the field. Once rare, Ph.D.
programs are becoming more prevalent in the field, as more writers
attempt to bridge the gap between academic study and artistic pursuit.
Creative writers often place an emphasis in either fiction or
poetry, and it is normal to start with short stories or simple poems.
They then make a schedule based on this emphasis including literature
classes, education classes and workshop classes to strengthen their
skills and techniques. Though they have their own programs of study in
the fields of film and theatre, screenwriting and playwriting
have become more popular in creative writing programs since creative
writing programs attempt to work more closely with film and theatre
programs as well as English programs. Creative writing students are
encouraged to get involved in extracurricular writing-based activities,
such as publishing clubs, school-based literary magazines or newspapers,
writing contests, writing colonies or conventions, and extended
education classes.
Many educators find that using creative writing can increase students' academic performance and resilience.
The activity of completing small goals consistently rather than
unfinished big goals creates pride in one's brain, which exudes dopamine
throughout the brain and increases motivation. It has been shown to
build resilience in students by documenting and analyzing their
experiences, which gives the students a new perspective on an old
situation and allows sorting of emotions. It also has been proven to
increase a student's level of compassion and create a sense of community among students in what could otherwise be deemed an isolating classroom.
Controversy in academia
Creative writing is considered by some academics (mostly in the US) to be an extension of the English
discipline, even though it is taught around the world in many
languages. The English discipline is traditionally seen as the critical
study of literary forms, not the creation of literary forms. Some
academics see creative writing as a challenge to this tradition. In the UK and Australia,
as well as increasingly in the US and the rest of the world, creative
writing is considered a discipline in its own right, not an offshoot of
any other discipline.
To say that the creative has no part in education is to argue that a university is not universal.
Those who support creative writing programs either as part or
separate from the English discipline, argue for the academic worth of
the creative writing experience. They argue that creative writing hones
the students' abilities to clearly express their thoughts and that
creative writing entails an in-depth study of literary terms and
mechanisms so they can be applied to the writer's work to foster
improvement. These critical analysis skills are further used in other
literary studies outside the creative writing sphere. Indeed, the
process of creative writing, the crafting of a thought-out and original
piece, is considered by some to constitute experience in creative problem-solving.
Despite a large number of academic creative writing programs
throughout the world, many people argue that creative writing cannot be
taught. Essayist Louis Menand explores the issue in an article for the New Yorker in which he quotes Kay Boyle,
the director of the creative writing program at San Francisco State
University for sixteen years, who said, "all creative-writing programs
ought to be abolished by law."
Contemporary discussions of creative writing at the university level
vary widely; some people value MFA programs and regard them with great
respect, whereas many MFA candidates and hopefuls lament their chosen
programs' lack of both diversity and genre awareness.
In prisons
In
the late 1960s, American prisons began implementing creative writing
programs due to the prisoner rights movement that stemmed from events
such as the Attica Prison riot.
The creative writing programs are among many art programs that aim to
benefit prisoners during and after their time in prison. Programs such
as these provide education, structure, and a creative outlet to
encourage rehabilitation. These programs' continuation relies heavily on
volunteers and outside financial support from sources such as authors
and activist groups.
The Poets Playwrights Essayists Editors and Novelists, known as PEN,
were among the most significant contributors to creative writing
programs in America. In 1971, PEN established the Prison Writing
Committee to implement and advocate for creative writing programs in
prisons throughout the U.S. The PEN Writing Committee improved prison libraries,
inspired volunteer writers to teach prisoners, persuaded authors to
host workshops, and founded an annual literary competition for
prisoners. Workshops and classes help prisoners build self-esteem, make
healthy social connections, and learn new skills, which can ease
prisoner reentry.
Creative writing programs offered in juvenile correction facilities have also proved beneficial. In Alabama, Writing Our Stories
began in 1997 as an anti-violence initiative to encourage positive
self-expression among incarcerated youths. The program found that the
participants gained confidence, the ability to empathize and see their
peers in a more positive light, and motivation to want to return to
society and live a more productive life.
One California study of prison fine arts programs found art
education increased emotional control and decreased disciplinary
reports. Participation in creative writing and other art programs result
in significant positive outcomes for the inmates' mental health,
relationship with their families, and the facility's environment. The
study evidenced improved writing skills enhanced one's ability in other
academic areas of study, portraying writing as a fundamental tool for
building one's intellect.
Teaching prisoners creative writing can encourage literacy, teach
necessary life skills, and provide prisoners with an outlet to express
regret, accountability, responsibility, and a kind of restorative
justice.
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (German:[ɛʁnstˈhɛkl̩]; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology, phylum, phylogeny, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.
The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures, collected in his Kunstformen der Natur ("Art Forms of Nature"), a book which would go on to influence the Art Nouveau artistic movement. As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträthsel (1895–1899; in English: The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution.
Haeckel was also a promoter of scientific racism and embraced the idea of Social Darwinism. He was the first person to characterize the Great War the "first" World War, which he did as early as 1914.
Life
Christmas of 1860
Ernst Haeckel was born on 16 February 1834, in Potsdam (then part of the Kingdom of Prussia).
In 1852 Haeckel completed studies at the Domgymnasium, the cathedral high-school of Merseburg. He then studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg, particularly with Albert von Kölliker, Franz Leydig, Rudolf Virchow (with whom he later worked briefly as assistant), and with the anatomist-physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858). Together with Hermann Steudner he attended botany
lectures in Würzburg. In 1857 Haeckel attained a doctorate in medicine,
and afterwards he received the license to practice medicine. The
occupation of physician appeared less worthwhile to Haeckel after
contact with suffering patients.
In 1864, his first wife, Anna Sethe, died. Haeckel dedicated some species of jellyfish that he found beautiful (such as Desmonema annasethe) to her.
From 1866 to 1867 Haeckel made an extended journey to the Canary Islands with Hermann Fol. On 17 October 1866 he arrived in London. Over the next few days he met Charles Lyell, and visited Thomas Huxley and family at their home. On 21 October he visited Charles Darwin at Down House in Kent. In 1867 he married Agnes Huschke. Their son Walter was born in 1868, their daughters Elizabeth in 1871 and Emma in 1873. In 1869 he traveled as a researcher to Norway, in 1871 to Croatia (where he lived on the island of Hvar in a monastery), and in 1873 to Egypt, Turkey, and Greece. In 1907 he had a museum built in Jena to teach the public about evolution. Haeckel retired from teaching in 1909, and in 1910 he withdrew from the Evangelical Church of Prussia.
In later life
On the occasion of his 80th birthday celebration he was presented with a two-volume work entitled Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken (What We Owe to Ernst Haeckel), edited at the request of the German Monistenbund by Heinrich Schmidt of Jena.
Haeckel's wife, Agnes, died in 1915, and he became substantially frailer, breaking his leg and arm. He sold his "Villa Medusa" in Jena in 1918 to the Carl Zeiss foundation, which preserved his library. Haeckel died on 9 August 1919.
Haeckel became the most famous proponent of Monism in Germany.
Politics
Haeckel's affinity for the German Romantic movement, coupled with his acceptance of a form of Lamarckism, influenced his political beliefs. Rather than being a strict Darwinian, Haeckel believed that the characteristics of an organism were acquired through interactions with the environment and that ontogeny reflected phylogeny. He saw the social sciences as instances of "applied biology", and that phrase was picked up and used for Nazi propaganda.
However, Haeckel's books were banned by the Nazi Party, which
refused Monism and Haeckel's freedom of thought. Moreover, it is worth
mentioning that Haeckel had often overtly recognized the great
contribution of educated Jews to the German culture.
Research
Sea anemones from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Art forms of Nature) of 1904
Haeckel was a zoologist, an accomplished artist and illustrator, and later a professor of comparative anatomy. Although Haeckel's ideas are important to the history of evolutionary theory, and although he was a competent invertebrateanatomist most famous for his work on radiolaria,
many speculative concepts that he championed are now considered
incorrect. For example, Haeckel described and named hypothetical
ancestral microorganisms that have never been found.
He was one of the first to consider psychology as a branch of physiology. He also proposed the kingdom Protista in 1866. His chief interests lay in evolution
and life development processes in general, including development of
nonrandom form, which culminated in the beautifully illustrated Kunstformen der Natur (Art forms of nature). Haeckel did not support natural selection, rather believing in Lamarckism.
Haeckel advanced a version of the earlier recapitulation theory previously set out by Étienne Serres in the 1820s and supported by followers of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire including Robert Edmond Grant. It proposed a link between ontogeny (development of form) and phylogeny (evolutionary descent), summed up by Haeckel in the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
His concept of recapitulation has been refuted in the form he gave it
(now called "strong recapitulation"), in favour of the ideas first advanced by Karl Ernst von Baer.
The strong recapitulation hypothesis views ontogeny as repeating forms
of adult ancestors, while weak recapitulation means that what is
repeated (and built upon) is the ancestral embryonic development
process. Haeckel supported the theory with embryo drawings
that have since been shown to be oversimplified and in part inaccurate,
and the theory is now considered an oversimplification of quite
complicated relationships, however comparison of embryos remains a powerful way to demonstrate that all animals are related. Haeckel introduced the concept of heterochrony, the change in timing of embryonic development over the course of evolution.
Haeckel (left) with Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, his assistant, in the Canaries, 1866Portrait of two ''P. alalus'', speculative species.
Haeckel was a flamboyant figure, who sometimes took great,
non-scientific leaps from available evidence. For example, at the time
when Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), Haeckel postulated that evidence of human evolution would be found in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).
At that time, no remains of human ancestors had yet been identified.
He described these theoretical remains in great detail and even named
the as-yet unfound species, Pithecanthropus alalus, and instructed his students such as Richard and Oskar Hertwig to go and find it.
One student did find some remains: a Dutchman named Eugène Dubois searched the East Indies from 1887 to 1895, discovering the remains of Java Man
in 1891, consisting of a skullcap, thighbone, and a few teeth. These
remains are among the oldest hominid remains ever found. Dubois
classified Java Man with Haeckel's Pithecanthropus label, though they were later reclassified as Homo erectus. Some scientists of the day suggested Dubois' Java Man as a potential intermediate form between modern humans and the common ancestor we share with the other great apes. The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of Homo erectus (possibly Homo ergaster), rather than the Asian populations exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man. (Ironically, a new human species, Homo floresiensis, a dwarf human type, has recently been discovered in the island of Flores).
Polygenism and racial theory
The creationistpolygenism of Samuel George Morton and Louis Agassiz, which presented human races as separately created species, was rejected by Charles Darwin, who argued for the monogenesis of the human species and the African origin of modern humans.
In contrast to most of Darwin's supporters, Haeckel put forward a
doctrine of evolutionary polygenism based on the ideas of the linguist August Schleicher, in which several different language groups had arisen separately from speechless prehuman Urmenschen (German: proto-humans),
which themselves had evolved from simian ancestors. These separate
languages had completed the transition from animals to man, and under
the influence of each main branch of languages, humans had evolved – in a
kind of Lamarckian
use-inheritance – as separate species, which could be subdivided into
races. From this, Haeckel drew the implication that languages with the
most potential yield the human races with the most potential, led by the
Semitic and Indo-Germanic groups, with Berber, Jewish, Greco-Roman and
Germanic varieties to the fore. As Haeckel stated:
We must mention here one of the
most important results of the comparative study of languages, which for
the Stammbaum of the species of men is of the highest significance,
namely that human languages probably had a multiple or polyphyletic
origin. Human language as such probably developed only after the species
of speechless Urmenschen or Affenmenschen (German: ape-men)
had split into several species or kinds. With each of these human
species, language developed on its own and independently of the others.
At least this is the view of Schleicher, one of the foremost authorities
on this subject. ... If one views the origin of the branches of
language as the special and principal act of becoming human, and the
species of humankind as distinguished according to their language stem,
then one can say that the different species of men arose independently
of one another.
Haeckel's view can be seen as a forerunner of the views of Carleton Coon,
who also believed that human races evolved independently and in
parallel with each other. These ideas eventually fell from favour.
Haeckel also applied the hypothesis of polygenism to the modern diversity of human groups. He became a key figure in social darwinism and leading proponent of scientific racism, stating for instance:
The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus),
has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all the races of
men, as the most highly developed and perfect. It is generally called
the Caucasian race, but as, among all the varieties of the species, the
Caucasian branch is the least important, we prefer the much more
suitable appellation proposed by Friedrich Müller, namely, that of Mediterranese.
For the most important varieties of this species, which are moreover
the most eminent actors in what is called "Universal History", first
rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean. ...
This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an
actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilisation
which seems to raise men above the rest of nature.
Haeckel divided human beings into ten races, of which the Caucasian was the highest and the primitives were doomed to extinction.
In his view, 'Negroes' were savages and Whites were the most civilised:
for instance, he claimed that '[t]he Negro' had stronger and more
freely movable toes than any other race, which, he argued, was evidence
of their being less evolved, and which led him to compare them to '"four-handed" Apes'.
In his Ontogeny and Phylogeny Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
wrote: "[Haeckel's] evolutionary racism; his call to the German people
for racial purity and unflinching devotion to a 'just' state; his belief
that harsh, inexorable laws of evolution ruled human civilization and
nature alike, conferring upon favored races the right to dominate
others ... all contributed to the rise of Nazism."
In his introduction to the Nazi party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg's 1930 book, [The Myth of the Twentieth Century], Peter Peel affirms that Rosenberg had indeed read Haeckel.
In the same line of thought, historian Daniel Gasman states that Haeckel's ideology stimulated the birth of Fascist ideology in Italy and France.
However, Robert J. Richards
notes: "Haeckel, on his travels to Ceylon and Indonesia, often formed
closer and more intimate relations with natives, even members of the
untouchable classes, than with the European colonials." and says the
Nazis rejected Haeckel, since he opposed antisemitism, while supporting
ideas they disliked (for instance atheism, feminism, internationalism,
pacifism etc.).
Haeckel claimed the origin of humanity was to be found in Asia: he believed that Hindustan
(Indian subcontinent) was the actual location where the first humans
had evolved. Haeckel argued that humans were closely related to the primates of Southeast Asia and rejected Darwin's hypothesis of Africa.
Haeckel later claimed that the missing link was to be found on the lost continent of Lemuria
located in the Indian Ocean. He believed that Lemuria was the home of
the first humans and that Asia was the home of many of the earliest primates;
he thus supported that Asia was the cradle of hominid evolution.
Haeckel also claimed that Lemuria connected Asia and Africa, which
allowed the migration of humans to the rest of the world.
In Haeckel's book The History of Creation (1884) he included migration routes which he thought the first humans had used outside of Lemuria.
Religious views
In Monism as Connecting Religion and Science (1892), he argued in favor of monism
as the view most compatible with the current scientific understanding
of the natural world. His perspective of monism was pantheistic and
impersonal.
The monistic idea of God, which alone is
compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognizes the divine
spirit in all things. It can never recognise in God a "personal being,"
or, in other words, an individual of limited extension in space, or even
of human form. God is everywhere.
Illustrations
of dog and human embryos, looking almost identical at 4 weeks then
differing at 6 weeks, shown above a 6-week turtle embryo and 8-day hen
embryo, presented by Haeckel in 1868 as convincing proof of evolution.
The pictures of the earliest embryonic stages are now considered
inaccurate.
When Haeckel was a student in the 1850s he showed great interest in embryology,
attending the rather unpopular lectures twice and in his notes sketched
the visual aids: textbooks had few illustrations, and large format
plates were used to show students how to see the tiny forms under a
reflecting microscope, with the translucent tissues seen against a black
background. Developmental series were used to show stages within a
species, but inconsistent views and stages made it even more difficult
to compare different species. It was agreed by all European
evolutionists that all vertebrates
looked very similar at an early stage, in what was thought of as a
common ideal type, but there was a continuing debate from the 1820s
between the Romantic recapitulation theory
that human embryos developed through stages of the forms of all the
major groups of adult animals, literally manifesting a sequence of
organisms on a linear chain of being, and Karl Ernst von Baer's opposing view, stated in von Baer's laws of embryology,
that the early general forms diverged into four major groups of
specialised forms without ever resembling the adult of another species,
showing affinity to an archetype but no relation to other types or any transmutation of species. By the time Haeckel was teaching he was able to use a textbook with woodcut illustrations written by his own teacher Albert von Kölliker,
which purported to explain human development while also using other
mammalian embryos to claim a coherent sequence. Despite the significance
to ideas of transformism, this was not really polite enough for the new
popular science writing, and was a matter for medical institutions and
for experts who could make their own comparisons.
Darwin, Naturphilosophie and Lamarck
Darwin's On the Origin of Species,
which made a powerful impression on Haeckel when he read it in 1864,
was very cautious about the possibility of ever reconstructing the
history of life, but did include a section reinterpreting von Baer's
embryology and revolutionising the field of study, concluding that
"Embryology rises greatly in interest, when we thus look at the embryo
as a picture, more or less obscured, of the common parent-form of each
great class of animals." It mentioned von Baer's 1828 anecdote
(misattributing it to Louis Agassiz)
that at an early stage embryos were so similar that it could be
impossible to tell whether an unlabelled specimen was of a mammal, a
bird, or of a reptile, and Darwin's own research using embryonic stages
of barnacles to show that they are crustaceans, while cautioning against the idea that one organism or embryonic stage is "higher" or "lower", or more or less evolved. Haeckel disregarded such caution, and in a year wrote his massive and ambitious Generelle Morphologie, published in 1866, presenting a revolutionary new synthesis of Darwin's ideas with the German tradition of Naturphilosophie going back to Goethe and with the progressive evolutionism of Lamarck in what he called Darwinismus. He used morphology to reconstruct the evolutionary history of life, in the absence of fossil evidence using embryology as evidence of ancestral relationships. He invented new terms, including ontogeny and phylogeny,
to present his evolutionised recapitulation theory that "ontogeny
recapitulated phylogeny". The two massive volumes sold poorly, and were
heavy going: with his limited understanding of German, Darwin found them
impossible to read. Haeckel's publisher turned down a proposal for a
"strictly scholarly and objective" second edition.
Haeckel's aim was a reformed morphology with evolution as the
organising principle of a cosmic synthesis unifying science, religion,
and art. He was giving successful "popular lectures" on his ideas to
students and townspeople in Jena, in an approach pioneered by his teacher Rudolf Virchow. To meet his publisher's need for a popular work he used a student's transcript of his lectures as the basis of his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte
of 1868, presenting a comprehensive presentation of evolution. In the
Spring of that year he drew figures for the book, synthesising his views
of specimens in Jena and published pictures to represent types. After
publication he told a colleague that the images "are completely exact,
partly copied from nature, partly assembled from all illustrations of
these early stages that have hitherto become known". There were various
styles of embryological drawings
at that time, ranging from more schematic representations to
"naturalistic" illustrations of specific specimens. Haeckel believed
privately that his figures were both exact and synthetic, and in public
asserted that they were schematic like most figures used in teaching.
The images were reworked to match in size and orientation, and though
displaying Haeckel's own views of essential features, they support von
Baer's concept that vertebrate embryos begin similarly and then diverge.
Relating different images on a grid conveyed a powerful evolutionary
message. As a book for the general public, it followed the common
practice of not citing sources.
In
1868 Haeckel illustrated von Baer's observation that early embryos of
different species could not be told apart by using the same woodcut
three times as dog, chick and turtle embryos: he changed this in the
next edition.
The book sold very well, and while some anatomical experts hostile to
Haeckel's evolutionary views expressed some private concerns that
certain figures had been drawn rather freely, the figures showed what
they already knew about similarities in embryos. The first published
concerns came from Ludwig Rütimeyer, a professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Basel
who had placed fossil mammals in an evolutionary lineage early in the
1860s and had been sent a complimentary copy. At the end of 1868 his
review in the Archiv für Anthropologie wondered about the claim
that the work was "popular and scholarly", doubting whether the second
was true, and expressed horror about such public discussion of man's
place in nature with illustrations such as the evolutionary trees being
shown to non-experts. Though he made no suggestion that embryo
illustrations should be directly based on specimens, to him the subject
demanded the utmost "scrupulosity and conscientiousness" and an artist
must "not arbitrarily model or generalise his originals for speculative
purposes" which he considered proved by comparison with works by other
authors. In particular, "one and the same, moreover incorrectly
interpreted woodcut, is presented to the reader three times in a row and
with three different captions as [the] embryo of the dog, the chick,
[and] the turtle". He accused Haeckel of "playing fast and loose with
the public and with science", and failing to live up to the obligation
to the truth of every serious researcher. Haeckel responded with angry
accusations of bowing to religious prejudice, but in the second (1870)
edition changed the duplicated embryo images to a single image captioned
"embryo of a mammal or bird". Duplication using galvanoplastic
stereotypes (clichés)
was a common technique in textbooks, but not on the same page to
represent different eggs or embryos. In 1891 Haeckel made the excuse
that this "extremely rash foolishness" had occurred in undue haste but
was "bona fide", and since repetition of incidental details was obvious
on close inspection, it is unlikely to have been intentional deception.
The revised 1870 second edition of 1,500 copies attracted more
attention, being quickly followed by further revised editions with
larger print runs as the book became a prominent part of the optimistic,
nationalist, anticlerical "culture of progress" in Otto von Bismarck's new German Empire. The similarity of early vertebrate embryos became common knowledge, and the illustrations were praised by experts such as Michael Foster of the University of Cambridge. In the introduction to his 1871 The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin gave particular praise to Haeckel, writing that if Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte
"had appeared before my essay had been written, I should probably never
have completed it". The first chapter included an illustration: "As
some of my readers may never have seen a drawing of an embryo, I have
given one of man and another of a dog, at about the same early stage of
development, carefully copied from two works of undoubted accuracy" with
a footnote citing the sources and noting that "Häckel has also given
analogous drawings in his Schöpfungsgeschichte." The fifth
edition of Haeckel's book appeared in 1874, with its frontispiece a
heroic portrait of Haeckel himself, replacing the previous controversial
image of the heads of apes and humans.
1874 illustration from Anthropogenie
showing "very early", "somewhat later" and "still later" stages of
embryos of fish (F), salamander (A), turtle (T), chick (H), pig (S), cow
(R), rabbit (K), and human (M)
Controversy
Later in 1874, Haeckel's simplified embryology textbook Anthropogenie made the subject into a battleground over Darwinism aligned with Bismarck's Kulturkampf
("culture struggle") against the Catholic Church. Haeckel took
particular care over the illustrations, changing to the leading
zoological publisher Wilhelm Engelmann of Leipzig and obtaining from
them use of illustrations from their other textbooks as well as
preparing his own drawings including a dramatic double page illustration
showing "early", "somewhat later" and "still later" stages of 8
different vertebrates. Though Haeckel's views had attracted continuing
controversy, there had been little dispute about the embryos and he had
many expert supporters, but Wilhelm His revived the earlier criticisms and introduced new attacks on the 1874 illustrations. Others joined in: both expert anatomists and Catholic priests and supporters were politically opposed to Haeckel's views.
While it has been widely claimed that Haeckel was charged with
fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena,
there does not appear to be an independently verifiable source for this
claim.
Recent analyses (Richardson 1998, Richardson and Keuck 2002) have found
that some of the criticisms of Haeckel's embryo drawings were
legitimate, but others were unfounded.
There were multiple versions of the embryo drawings, and Haeckel
rejected the claims of fraud. It was later said that "there is evidence
of sleight of hand" on both sides of the feud between Haeckel and Wilhelm His. Robert J. Richards,
in a paper published in 2008, defends the case for Haeckel, shedding
doubt against the fraud accusations based on the material used for
comparison with what Haeckel could access at the time.
In Jena he is remembered with a monument at Herrenberg (erected in 1969), an exhibition at Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, and at the Jena Phyletic Museum, which continues to teach about evolution and share his work to this day.
The research vessel Ernst Haeckel is named in his honor.
In 1981, a botanical journal called Ernstia was started being published in the city of Maracay, Venezuela.
In 2013, Ernstia, a genus of calcareous sponges in the family Clathrinidae. The genus was erected to contain five species previously assigned to Clathrina. The genus name honors Ernst Haeckel for his contributions towards sponge taxonomy and phylogeny.
Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species
had immense popular influence, but although its sales exceeded its
publisher's hopes it was a technical book rather than a work of popular
science: long, difficult and with few illustrations. One of Haeckel's
books did a great deal to explain his version of "Darwinism" to the world. It was a bestselling, provocatively illustrated book in German, titled Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, published in Berlin in 1868, and translated into English as The History of Creation in 1876. Until 1909, eleven editions had appeared, as well as 25 translations into other languages. The Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte cemented Haeckel's reputation as one of Germany's most forceful popularizers of science. His Welträthsel were reprinted ten times after the book's first publication in 1899; ultimately, over 400,000 copies were sold.
Haeckel argued that human evolution consisted of precisely 22 phases, the 21st – the "missing link" – being a halfway step between apes and humans. He even formally named this missing link Pithecanthropus alalus, translated as "ape man without speech".
Haeckel's literary output was extensive, including many books, scientific papers, and illustrations.
Monographs
Radiolaria (1862)
Siphonophora (1869)
Monera (1870)
Calcareous Sponges (1872)
Challenger reports
Deep-Sea Medusae (1881)
Siphonophora (1888)
Deep-Sea Keratosa (1889)
Radiolaria (1887)
Books on biology and its philosophy
"Monophyletischer Stammbaum der Organismen" from Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866) with the three branches Plantae, Protista, Animalia.
Generelle Morphologie der Organismen: allgemeine Grundzüge
der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von
Charles Darwin reformirte Descendenz-Theorie. (1866) Berlin (General
morphology of organisms: general foundations of form-science,
mechanically grounded by the descendance theory reformed by Charles
Darwin)
Über unsere gegenwärtige Kenntnis vom Ursprung des Menschen (1898) (On our current understanding of the origin of man) – in English The Last Link, 1898
Der Kampf um den Entwickelungsgedanken (1905) (The struggle over thought on evolution) – in English Last Words on Evolution: A Popular Retrospect and Summary, Translated from the Second Edition by Joseph McCabe, New York: Peter Eckler, Publisher; London: A. Owen & Co., 1906.
Some historians have seen Haeckel's social Darwinism as a forerunner to Nazi ideology.Others have denied the relationship altogether.
The evidence is in some respects ambiguous. On one hand, Haeckel was an advocate of scientific racism.
He held that evolutionary biology had definitively proven that races
were unequal in intelligence and ability, and that their lives were also
of unequal value, e.g., "These lower races (such as the Veddahs or
Australian negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or
dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must therefore, assign a totally
different value to their lives." As a result of the "struggle for existence", it followed that the "lower" races would eventually be exterminated.
He was also a social Darwinist who believed that "survival of the
fittest" was a natural law, and that struggle led to improvement of the
race. As an advocate of eugenics, he also believed that about 200,000 mentally and congenitally ill should be killed by a medical control board. This idea was later put into practice by Nazi Germany, as part of the Aktion T4 program. Alfred Ploetz, founder of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, praised Haeckel repeatedly, and invited him to become an honorary member. Haeckel accepted the invitation.
Haeckel also believed that Germany should be governed by an
authoritarian political system, and that inequalities both within and
between societies were an inevitable product of evolutionary law. Haeckel was also an extreme German nationalist who believed strongly in the superiority of German culture.
On the other hand, Haeckel was not an anti-Semite. In the racial
hierarchies he constructed Jews tended to appear closer to the top,
rather than closer to the bottom as in Nazi racial thought. He was also a pacifist until the First World War, when he wrote propaganda in favor of the war.
The principal arguments of historians who deny a meaningful connection
between Haeckel and Nazism are that Haeckel's ideas were very common at
the time, that Nazis were much more strongly influenced by other
thinkers, and that Haeckel is properly classified as a 19th-century
German liberal, rather than a forerunner to Nazism. They also point to incompatibilities between evolutionary biology and Nazi ideology.
Nazis themselves divided on the question of whether Haeckel should be counted as a pioneer of their ideology. SS captain and biologist Heinz Brücher wrote a biography of Haeckel in 1936, in which he praised Haeckel as a "pioneer in biological state thinking". This opinion was also shared by the scholarly journal, Der Biologe, which celebrated Haeckel's 100th birthday, in 1934, with several essays acclaiming him as a pioneering thinker of Nazism.
Other Nazis kept their distance from Haeckel. Nazi propaganda
guidelines issued in 1935 listed books which popularized Darwin and
evolution on an "expunged list". Haeckel was included by name as a
forbidden author.
Gunther Hecht, a member of the Nazi Department of Race Politics, also
issued a memorandum rejecting Haeckel as a forerunner of Nazism. Kurt Hildebrandt, a Nazi political philosopher, also rejected Haeckel. Eventually Haeckel was rejected by Nazi bureaucrats.
