The Rise and Fall of Evolutionary Morphology

达尔文的进化论是现代生物学的基础，当然也是19世纪生物学研究的最高成就。尽管达尔文的自然选择进化论在19世纪占据了中心地位，但它并没有被广泛接受。然而，有一个主要的接受据点：德国长期以来一直被认为是“达尔文主义的第二故乡”。尽管有这种独特的特点，科学史家却很少注意到支持达尔文主义的德国生物学家，即德国的大学生物学家。最重要的是，我们缺乏一个令人满意的关于德国生物学家的惊人的非达尔文的进化方法的描述，这种方法后来被称为“进化形态学”。尼哈特博士正在分析进化论形态学在德国的命运，从1859年达尔文的理论发表之前一直到1900年左右它的衰落。利用以前未开发的档案资源，该研究正在追踪形态学家的理论承诺和他们在大学系统中脆弱的制度地位之间的关系。通过采用这种方法，Nyhart博士不仅希望解释这一特定研究项目的兴起和衰落，还希望说明制度和学科因素在科学知识发展中发挥作用的程度。

Darwinian evolution serves as a foundation for modern biology and is certainly the crowning achievement of 19th century biological research. Despite it's present centrality, Darwinian evolution by means of natural selection was not widely accepted in the 19th century. There was, however, one major stronghold of acceptance: Germany has long been considered " Darwinism's second home." Despite this unique trait, historians of science have paid surprisingly little attention to the German biologists who supported Darwinism, viz. German university biologists. Most significantly, we lack a satisfactory account of German biologists' strikingly un-Darwinian approach to evolution, which came to be known as "evolutionary morphology." Dr. Nyhart is analyzing the fate of evolutionary morphology in Germany from just before the publication of Darwin's theory in 1859 to its eclipse around 1900. Using previously untapped archival sources, the study is tracing the relationship between the morphologists' theoretical commitments and their tenuous institutional position within the university system. By taking this approach, Dr. Nyhart hopes to explain not only the rise and decline of this particular research program, but also to illustrate the extent to which institutional and disciplinary factors play a role in the development of scientific knowledge.