Thinking Beyond Darwin

Thinking Beyond Darwin
The Idea of the Type as a Key to Vertebrate Evolution
Ernst-Michel Kranich
Renewal in Science series, Lindisfarne Books, 1999
ISBN: 0-940262-93-2
170 pages; paperback; $17.95

Largely due to the work of Charles Darwin, evolution has become a generally accepted fact. However, Darwin’s theory of evolution – his explanation of evolution through natural selection - is still being debated. In Thinking Beyond Darwin, Ernst-Michael Kranich lays the groundwork for a more comprehensive science of evolution based on Goethe’s dynamic concept of the vertebrate type. He focuses on the central problem of evolutionary science: are there underlying principles that connect the many disparate facts? By applying Goethe's method consistently to the various classes of vertebrates, Kranich shows that the dynamic laws and driving forces of evolution are encompassed by the inner lawfulness of living organisms. Through many concrete examples, he demonstrates how we can participate through formative thinking in evolutionary processes. Following vertebrate evolution from the fishes to the amphibians, reptiles, mammals and the human being, he shows how their myriad forms become intelligible as increasingly comprehensive manifestations of the mammalian type. In this way, Thinking Beyond Darwin offers astonishing new insights into the coherence and inner dynamics of organisms

Contents

Foreword by Craig Holdrege
Introduction
1. The Horse as Organism
2. Neo-Darwinism and its Critics
3. Nominalism and Evolutionary Theory
4. The Foundations of an Organic View of the Animal World in the Thought of Herder and Goethe
5. Understanding Animal Forms through the Generative Method
6. The Evolution of the Horse
7. Understanding Fish Evolution
8. From the Fishes to the Amphibians
9. Reptiles and Mammals
10. Evolution as Development
11. The Human Being and the Vertebrate Type Epilogue
Bibliography
Index