Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology

The work traces the intellectual history of animal morphology from ancient comparative anatomy through later scientific debates, outlining three dominant attitudes toward form: functional, formal (transcendental), and materialistic. It surveys key figures and movements, including comparative anatomy, embryology, cell theory, evolutionary thinking, and competing accounts of the relation between function and form, and examines controversies over organisation, activity, and heredity. It addresses topics such as archetypes, germ-layer theory, origins of vertebrates, and causal approaches to morphogenesis. The author advocates attention to organismal activity and continuity in morphological thought while mapping how successive theoretical shifts reshaped biological interpretation.