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Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
(4 Feb 1776 - 16 Feb 1837)
German naturalist who made histological and anatomical studies on invertebrates. Preceding Darwin, he believed in the “descent by modification,” of species. He was among the first to regard the cell as the structural unit of life forms.
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Science Quotes by Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (5 quotes)
[Defining Life] The constant uniformity of phenomena under diversity of external influences.
— Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
Biologie (1802). As cited in translated form in George Henry Lewes, Physiology of Common Life (1875), Vol. 2, 356.
All living forms are the results of physical influences which are still in operation, and vary only in degree and direction
— Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
Entry for Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), Vol. 27, 256.
Every form of life can be produced by physical forces in one of two ways: either by coming into being out of formless matter, or by the modification of an already existing form by a continued process of shaping. In the latter case the cause of this modification may lie either in the influence of a dissimilar male generative matter upon the female germ, or in the influence of other powers which operate only after procreation.
— Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
From Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, The Biology or Philosophy of Animate Nature, as quoted in translation of Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel's 8th German edition with E. Ray Lankester (ed.), The History of Creation, or, the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes (1892), 95.
In every living being there exists a capacity for endless diversity of form; each possesses the power of adapting its organization to the variations of the external world, and it is this power, called into activity by cosmic changes, which has enabled the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to climb to higher and higher stages of organization, and has brought endless variety into nature.
— Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
From Gottfried Reinold Treviranus, Biologie, oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur [Biology, or Philosophy of Animate Nature], quoted in Lecture 1, August Weismann (1904, 2nd German ed.) as translated in August Weismann, Margaret R. Thomson (trans.), The Evolution Theory, Vol 1., 18-19.
[Zoophytes (Protists, or simple life forms) are] the primitive types from which all the organisms of the higher classes had arisen by gradual development.
— Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus
Entry for Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), Vol. 27, 255-256.
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4 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Treviranus's birth.
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan
