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"Monographs on the Universe": Ernst Haeckel's Evolutionary Monism in American Context, 1866-83

Halverson, Daniel Lee
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1491568531968955

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, History.
Ernst Haeckel was one of the nineteenth century’s most famous and influential scientists, and science popularizers. According to one historian of biology, he was “the chief source of the world’s knowledge of Darwinism” in his time. He was also one of the chief sources of the world’s knowledge of what has come to be called, in our time, the “conflict thesis” in the history of science and religion. At the same time, he endeavored to set up his own Darwinian-romantic theology, the forgotten religion of monism, in the place of Christianity. This paper makes use of new information technologies to gather documents which have been largely inaccessible in the past, on account of the difficulty of finding and sorting them. It aims at a comprehensive discussion of Haeckel’s influence in the United States at this time – with lay people, with clerical audiences, and with other scientists. I find that Haeckel’s ideas met with a poor reception in the United States, because they faced a steep “cultural gradient,” as between the monarchical, romantic, and sharply anti-Catholic values prevalent in Haeckel’s native Prussia, and the democratic, empirical, and mildly anti-Catholic values prevalent in the United States. In the “struggle for their existence,” Haeckel’s evolutionary monism faced superior competition from evolutionary world-explanations which originated within an Anglo-American context, and which were, in consequence, better “adapted,” so to speak, to their “environment.”
Alan Rocke, Dr. (Advisor)
Kenneth Ledford, Dr. (Committee Member)
Miriam Levin, Dr. (Committee Member)
61 p.
History
Ernst Haeckel, Popular Science, Science, Biology, Evolution, Religion, Theology, Naturalism, Materialism, Romanticism, American History, German History,

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Citations

  • Halverson, D. L. (2017). "Monographs on the Universe": Ernst Haeckel's Evolutionary Monism in American Context, 1866-83 [Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1491568531968955

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Halverson, Daniel. "Monographs on the Universe": Ernst Haeckel's Evolutionary Monism in American Context, 1866-83. 2017. Case Western Reserve University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1491568531968955.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Halverson, Daniel. ""Monographs on the Universe": Ernst Haeckel's Evolutionary Monism in American Context, 1866-83." Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1491568531968955

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1491568531968955
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© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.