Ernst Haeckel's "ecology" in Russia of the first half of the twentieth century

Rethinking some roots of ecosystem approach in aquatic ecology: between the food cycle and lake metabolism

The present study provides new insight into the key aspects of the early formative period of the ecosystem concept in aquatic ecology. Raymond Lindeman's trophodynamics is known to be a starting point for the development of the modern concept of ecosystem. The trophodynamic approach in ecology was proposed by Lindeman in his widely cited paper of 1942. Lindeman's views are analyzed in comparison with the contemporary production studies in aquatic ecology. It is shown that a similar theoretical system has been proposed in the USSR at the end of the 1930s by Georgiy G. Vinberg. He introduced the concept of biotic balance based on the wide appraisal of the dark and light bottles method. The study shows that both Lindeman's trophodynamics and Vinberg's concept of biotic balance relied on an energy-based approach in considering the wholeness of a water body. The two scientists, however, differed in several important aspects concerning the interpretation of the role of living organisms. The holistic interpretation of ecosystem by Lindeman and Vinberg can be seen as part of the dilemma between physicalism and organicism. At the same time, the main emphasis in the concepts of both Vinberg and Lindemann was on the primary production component, a feature that was common to the first holistic systems in production hydrobiology (e.g., E. Naumann's regional limnology). It is clear that modern problems of aquatic ecology should be addressed from the perspective of the organismocentric understanding of the ecosystem, but undoubtedly at the new level of development of this view.

Ernst Haeckel, Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay and the racial controversy over the Papuans

Background

The “German Darwin” Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a key figure during the first “Darwinian revolution“, a time when the foundations of the modern evolutionary theory were laid. It was Haeckel, who crucially contributed to the visualization of the Darwinian theory by designing “genealogical-trees” illustrating the evolution of various species, including humans. Although the idea of explaining human evolution by natural selection belongs to Darwin, Haeckel was the first who attempted to create a new exact anthropology based on the Darwinian method.

Discussion

Trying to immediately reconstruct human evolution proceeding from the description of modern populations led Haeckel to the views which, from the contemporary perspective, are definitely racist. Haeckel created racial anthropology intending to prove human origins from a lower organism, but without the intention of establishing a discriminatory racial praxis. Although hierarchical in its outcome, the Haeckelian method did not presuppose the necessity of a racial hierarchy of currently living humans. It is crucial to grasp in what sense Haeckel’s theoretical explorations in human evolution were racist, and in what sense they were not. Our argument flows as follows. One of Haeckel’s pupils was the Russian ethnographer, anthropologist and zoologist Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Miklucho-Maclay (1846–1888). Maclay and Haeckel worked closely together for several years; they traveled jointly and Maclay had enough time to learn the major methodological principles of Haeckel’s research. Yet in contrast to Haeckel, Maclay is regarded as one of the first scientific anti-racists, who came to anti-racist views using empirical field studies in Papua-New Guinea.

Conclusions

We claim that while conducting these studies Maclay applied scientific principles to a significant extent acquired from Haeckel. The paper contributes to the view that Haeckel’s theoretical racism did not follow the Darwinian method he used.