Transcendental anatomy, also known as philosophical anatomy, was a form of comparative anatomy that sought to find ideal patterns and structures common to all organisms in nature.[1] The term originated from naturalist philosophy in the German provinces, and culminated in Britain especially by scholars Robert Knox and Richard Owen, who drew from Goethe and Lorenz Oken.[1] From the 1820s to 1859, it persisted as the medical expression of natural philosophy before the Darwinian revolution.[2]
Amongst its various definitions, transcendental anatomy has four main tenets:
- the presupposition of an Ideal Plan among the multiplicity of visible structures in the animal and plant kingdom, and that the Plan determines function
- the Ideal Plan acted as a force for the maintenance of anatomical uniformity (as opposed to diversity-inducing forces of Nature)
- the belief that this a priori Plan was discoverable
- the desire to discover universal Laws underlying anatomical differences.[3]
- ^ a b Alan Bates (1 January 2010). The Anatomy of Robert Knox: Murder, Mad Science and Medical Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-1-84519-381-2. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
- ^ Janis McLarren Caldwell (18 November 2004). Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Britain: From Mary Shelley to George Eliot. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–. ISBN 978-1-139-45664-7. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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