Abstract

Through the work of Charles Darwin, a great task was set before science--to progress from opinions about evolution to a science of evolution, and reveal the inner laws and driving forces at work in the development of the organic world. In Thinking beyond Darwin, Ernst-Michael Kranich focuses on a central problem of evolutionary science. He shows us a way, based on Goethe's botanical and zoological investigations, of seeing the coherence and inner dynamics of organisms. Using Goethe's concept of type as a key to vertebrate evolution, Kranich methodically lays the foundation for a science of evolution. 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 evolutionary thinking, Kranich shows that the laws and driving forces of evolution are encompassed by the inner lawfulness of living organisms and that we must participate through formative thinking in the evolutionary processes. Thinking beyond Darwin, makes an important contribution to the development of more adequate concepts of evolution and arrives at clear insights about earlier animal forms and evolutionary laws that could have immense consequences for future evolutionary thinking.