Abstract
The aim of this work is to present the thesis “On the Ontogenetic Evolution of the Human Embryo in its Relations with Phylogenesis,” by Affonso Regulo de Oliveira Fausto (1866–1930), published in Brazil in 1890. To our knowledge, it was one of the first Brazilian academic works focused specifically on evolution. It was also the first doctoral thesis that addressed the topic of recapitulation in order to analyze what was then called the progressive evolution of the human species in tandem with the embryological development of the individuals that would constitute the Brazilian “type.” In the present work, we analyze the author’s thesis in relation to its sources, concepts, as well as the country’s political context at the time of its publication. Fausto’s text, in which he explicitly recognized the influence of Ernst Haeckel’s (1834–1919) recapitulation theory, represents a window to understand better a concept of nation based on science and on the idea of inexorable progress that was accepted in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century.
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01 November 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09657-2
Notes
Goeldi studied at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena under Ernst Haeckel’s mentorship. In 1880, he came to Brazil initially to work at the Brazilian National Museum, later moving to the Paraense Museum. His doctorate dealt with the compared evolution of three fish species. He also published several articles on the evolution of other animal species throughout his career (Sanjad 2010, pp. 279–290).
Ihering was a German-Brazilian physician, teacher, and ornithologist who had gained his doctorate in Giessen. He came to Brazil in 1880 as a thirty-year-old naturalist. He studied the evolutionary history both of extant and extinct Brazilian and South American animals (Gualtieri 2008, p. 111–120).
We will retain the expression “Escola do Recife” (School of Recife) throughout the text, because it is well known and commonly used in Brazilian academic literature.
Barreto was a Brazilian philosopher, writer, and jurist who was one of the intellectual leaders of the Escola do Recife. Barreto was a Germanist: he published articles and books influenced by the evolutionary ideas of Haeckel and other German scientists and philosophers (Collichio 1988, p. 64).
Romero was a Brazilian writer and politician and one of the founding members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. A prolific writer, his interests included Brazilian folklore, poetry, literary criticism, and journalism. In 1878, he published Philosophy in Brazil, in which there are several references to Darwin’s works (Collichio 1988, p. 47). According to Glick, Romero was “the most important intellectual historian in late nineteenth-century Brazil, the fin-de-siècle intellectual movement began in the mid-1870s” (Glick 2003, p. 259).
Cardoso was a Brazilian lawyer, poet, philosopher, and politician. His main work was the book Cormogenia Política, where he attempted to apply the biogenetic law to human History (Badaró 1980, p. 72).
Lívio de Castro was a Brazilian physician and writer who was one the leaders of the Escola do Recife branch in Rio de Janeiro. According to Collichio, he was a “scholar on the Darwinian doctrine and of the monism” (Collichio 1988, p. 81).
Fragoso was a Brazilian physician and lawyer. We were unable to determine the date of his death. A piece in a relatively unknown and now defunct newspaper states that he was one of the groomsmen in a wedding in 1937. Throughout his academic life, he was a relentless defender of Cesare Lombroso’s doctrine (Martins Júnior 2015, p. 1226).
Martins was a Brazilian historian and a prominent figure of the Portuguese historiography of his time. A critic of the scientism, he nevertheless mentioned some of those ideas in his works (Martins 2009).
Paladino was an Italian physiologist. “He described muscle bridges going from the atrium, through the valve cusps and chordae tendineae to the papillary muscles and ventricular walls. His studies were performed on human, horse, donkey, ox, buffalo, cat, chicken and turtle hearts and described fibers which are resistant yet extensible, elastic and contractile which must undoubtedly be important in the mechanics of the cardiac pump" (Sonnino and Mawk 1998, p. 199).
For Spencer’s influence in Brazil, see Domingues (2016).
Bowler explicitly admits that defining "preformation is somewhat difficult” (1971, p. 221). Regardless of the complexity of attaining a precise definition, in a rather simplified view, preformation has been used to refer to “any position involving a belief in the existence of a miniature organism at some time before conception” (1971, p. 221). That definition is similar in meaning to the example presented by Mayr: “there was something preformed in the egg which was responsible for turning the egg of a grass frog into a grass frog” (1982, p. 95). Epigenesis, whose definition is also variable, is nevertheless commonly understood “as the sequential production of the parts of the embryo” (Bowler 1971, p. 222) or as “the gradual differentiation of an entirely amorphous egg into the organs of the adult” (Mayr 1982, p. 95).
In The Evolution of Man, Haeckels stated: “In this phylogenetic significance of ontogenetic phenomena, it is of course most important to distinguish clearly and exactly between the original, palingenetic processes of evolution, and the later cenogenetic processes of the same. The term palingenetic process (or reproduction of the history of the germ) is applied to all such phenomena in the history of evolution as are exactly reproduced, in consequence of conservative heredity, in each succeeding generation, and which, therefore, enables us directly to infer the corresponding processes in the tribal history of the developed ancestors. The term cenogenetic process (or vitiation of the history of the germ) is applied to all such processes in the germ-history as are not to be explained by heredity from primeval parent-forms, but which have been acquired at a later time in consequence of the adaptation of the germ, or embryo form, to special conditions of evolution. These cenogenetic processes are recent additions, which do not allow of direct inference as to the corresponding processes in the tribal history of the ancestral line, but which rather falsify and conceal the latter” (Haeckel 1897, vol. 1, p. 10).
The translation of Für Darwin into French is currently available online: https://ia803109.us.archive.org/12/items/bulletinbiologiq1318univ/bulletinbiologiq1318univ.pdf
Tapajós was a Brazilian physician who belonged to the Escola do Recife. In 1890, he presented his doctoral thesis “Psyco-Physiologia da percepção e das representações” at the Rio de Janeiro’s medical school. It is this thesis that was cited by Fausto.
“Perigenesis of plastidules” is a reference to a book written by Haeckel, published in 1876, whose title is Die Perigenesis der Plastidule; oder, Die Wellenzeugnung der Lebenstheilchen. Ein Versuch zur mechanischen Erklärung der elementaren Enwicklungsvorgänge (The Perigenesis of the Plastidule; or, The Wave Generation of the Particles of Life. An Attempt to Explain the Elementary Development Processes Mechanically): In Haeckel’s words: “In my essay on "The Perigenesis of the Plastidules" (1875) I formulated the hypothesis that in the last instance the plastidules are the vehicles of heredity—that is to say, plasma-molecules which have the property of memory” (Haeckel 1905, p. 136).Plastidules or plastids, are the “hypothetical basic units of living matter whose wavelike movements, activated by external stimuli, transferred their acquired memory to the offspring” (Ceccarelli 2019, p.4; emphasis added). According to Gould, for Haeckel, the mechanical-molecular process of evolution would happen as follows: “Somatic cells are altered by environment and by activity of organs containing them. These modifications are passed as wave motions to the sex cells, thus permitting the inheritance of acquired characters” (Gould 1977, p. 484; emphasis added).
In Haeckel’s own words, “the plasma or living matter, of the earliest organisms on the earth … was a homogeneous plasson or archiplasm—that is to say, a plasma-compound that was not yet differentiated into outer cytoplasm and inner caryoplasm” (1905, pp. 157–158). “The vital activities of each cell form a sum of mechanical processes, which depend radically on movements of the smallest "life particles," the molecules of the living substance. If we call this active substance the Plasson, and the molecules the Plastidules, we may say that the individual physiological character of each cell depends on the molecular movements of its plastidules” (Haeckel 1897, p. 182).
Barbosa was a well-known lawyer, diplomat, and politician. He was a notable supporter of the anti-slavery movement as well as of the liberal and federalist movements that erupted during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century in Brazil (Cintra 2016).
Beviláqua was a Brazilian professor in the Escola do Recife who authored the Brazilian Código Civil (civil code) in 1917. He was an internationally acclaimed legal scholar who also wrote on the subjects of philosophy and history (Silva 2013).
The expression “mixed-races” is rather unusual and even confusing at first glance and should be interpreted in the two contexts in which it was used by Fausto. He was likely referring to the original “human races” (African and Amerindian) that were thought to have undergone a process of miscegenation (“mixing”) with the white race during Brazilian history. This interpretation seems compatible with Fausto’s other use of the expression: “The psychology of the Brazilian ethnic criminal represents the return to the mixed-race state of mind prior to the historic moment of the actual mixing of the races” (1890, p. 31). In referring to a “return to the mixed races state of mind” (probably understood as the “primitive” state of mind of criminals), the use of the word return indicates that such a state of mind existed before what he called “the actual mixing,” and therefore had to be characteristic of the original races.
In Haeckel’s words: “At present, therefore, the majority of observers assume that between the original nucleated egg cell and the known nucleated parent-cell there is a stage in which there is no real cell-kernel or nucleus, and in which, therefore, the form-value of the whole organic individual is no longer that of a true nucleated cell, but that of a non-nucleated cytod, i.e. a simple protoplasmic body in which no true cell-kernel (nucleus) is to be found … we assume that the germ-vesicle does not completely disappear, but that the germ-spot (nucleolus) remains and amalgamates at the moment of fertilization with the nucleus (or nucleolus?) of the sperm-cell, we may say that the kernel of the parent-cell arises anew in that act, and that, therefore, a non-nucleated germ-stage, in which the form-value of the germ is only that of a cytod, precedes the one-celled germ-stage (the parent-cell) … [W]e shall call this simplest (non-nucleated) stage, the Monerula” (Haeckel 1897, pp. 178–179).
According Haeckel: “The elementary organism, or the individual of the first order, occurs in two different grades. The first and lowest is the cytod …. The second and higher grade is the cell, which has been differentiated into nucleus and protoplasm. Both grades, cytods and cells, are grouped together under the idea of sculptors or builders, because they alone in reality build the organism” (Haeckel 1897, p. 130).
“l’organisation de l’homme porte an soi des traces nombreuses et evidentes des transfomations qu’elle a subie et ses rapports embryonnaires permettent de reconnaitre des relations plus eloignées encore. Aussi l’organisme de l’homme s’élève nos seulement au dessus des autre animaux mais même au dessus des quadrumanes: il ocupe le sommet du monde organisé. Les índices qu’il nous offre encore des dispositiones anatomiques moins élevées sont le traces d’un condition vaincue. Ils nous montrent les étapes parcoureus d’unlong chemin, qui conduit toujors vers um état d’organisation plus elevée; ils nous pemettent em outre supposes que cette marche ascendente continuera dans le méme direction. Le perfectionnement est le but de cette ascention progressive. C’est l’ideal que l’on se fait du developpement de ce que nous appellons – le psychique, développement qui est prepare par le perfectionnement du corps et qui est aussi limite par lui. En cherchant à l’atteindre l’espèce humaine se perfectionne toujours davantage et s’éloigne ainsi de plus en plus du lien obscur de as première origine” (Fausto 1890, pp.74–75).
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Waizbort, R.F., da Luz, M.R.M.P., Edler, F.C. et al. The First Brazilian Thesis of Evolution: Haeckel's Recapitulation Theory and Its Relations with the Idea of Progress. J Hist Biol 54, 447–481 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09651-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09651-8