History of Zoology

Marine biological stations have not existed solely inside the academic disciplines of zoology or biology. This chapter takes the case of Japan’s Misaki Marine Biological Station in order to argue that marine biological work was also part and parcel of fisheries work. It traces the convergence and divergence of zoological and fisheries work during Misaki Marine Biological Station"s first half-century, a period spanning from the 1880s to the 1930s.

di Daniele Vergari-Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani-Volume 95 (2019) TARGIONI TOZZETTI, Adolfo.-Nacque a Firenze il 13 febbraio 1823 da Giovanni, secondogenito di Ottaviano e fratello di Antonio, e da Elena Ferrati. Il padre, avvocato e magistrato, lo avviò agli studi scientifici presso l'Università di Pisa dove si laureò in medicina nel 1848, frequentando le lezioni di botanica e quelle di anatomia comparata tenute prima da Gaetano Savi e poi da Paolo e Pietro Savi. Il giovane Targioni Tozzetti trovò nello studio della botanica e della fisiologia un campo di interessi particolarmente stimolante tanto che, appena ventenne, partecipò alla Riunione degli scienziati italiani di Lucca (1843), tenendo una relazione sulla fronda dei pini e una sull'organo femminile del genere Citrus. Nel 1845 prese parte anche al Congresso di Napoli, sempre in compagnia dello zio Antonio con il quale ebbe sempre uno stretto rapporto di amicizia e confidenza, e nel quale ebbe un maestro e una guida sicura per affermarsi nel mondo scientifico italiano. Tornato a Firenze nel 1848, iniziò a esercitare medicina presso l'arcispedale di S. Maria nuova, ma l'attività di medico, ormai consolidata tradizione familiare da più di un secolo, non fu per Adolfo particolarmente coinvolgente. Dopo pochi anni, alcuni dei quali passati a fare il medico condotto-e nei quali segnaliamo l'attività in occasione del colera del 1854-55 nella zona di Viareggio-, abbandonò la professione per dedicarsi all'insegnamento e allo studio. Lo zio Antonio, per problemi di salute,

Based on 18th century natural history a short summary on the history of zoology at the Vienna University and its institutions is given. In doing so close interrelations between zoology and medicine become evident. Rudolf Kner, first professor of zoology in the Habsburg monarchy, marks exemplarily the transition of the philosophical faculty from basically propaedeutic studies towards a genuine research facility. Finally, the development of palaeobiology in Vienna, rooting in 19th century zoology and geologically shaped palaeontology, is summarised in short.

Giovanni Canestrini non fu coinvolto in progetti coloniali, ma la presunta inferiorità dei “selvaggi” gli faceva buon gioco. Da tempo tra gli evoluzionisti era iniziata la  ricerca dell’ anello mancante tra le scimmie e l’uomo. In mancanza di quei reperti paleontologici che affioreranno in abbondanza dopo la sua morte, l’escamotage che Canestrini tenta consiste nel postulare l’esistenza di un anello mancante di tipo psichico: il “selvaggio africano", appunto. Se l’assunto è che tra l’animale più evoluto e l’uomo più degradato non vi sia soluzione di continuità, il mezzo per dimostrarlo è così l’invenzione di una fase intermedia. Ma questa operazione richiede da una parte di attribuire ad alcuni animali prestazioni di intelligenza e di spiritualità straordinarie; dall’altra di abbassare il grado di umanità di alcune etnie, come i boscimani, enfatizzandone la stupidità e le caratteristiche brutali. Il Positivismo non temeva accuse di razzismo.
Fortunatamente Giovanni Canestrini  avverte la minaccia di quella deriva che andrà sotto il nome di darwinismo sociale, dimostrando - apprezzabilmente, per uno scienziato dell'epoca -  preoccupazioni di carattere etico.


Giovanni Canestrini was an 'armchair anthropologist'. Unfortunately, the ethnographic data he used to support his admittedly illuminated anthropology are mostly incorrect. With respect to the theories of the 18th-century French naturalists and the 19th-century German natural philosophers, Canestrini's contemporaries only confirmed the prejudice regarding the superiority of the Europeans, on both physical and moral grounds. Some of these researchers practised a kind of ethnoanthropological tourism, handicapped by enormous diffculties in communication: poorly phrased and/or translated questions often received incongruous answers, and the resulting misunderstandings became ethnographic literature. Linguistic and cognitive problems were flanked by a political one. To declare that an exotic spot on the globe was inhabited by natives incapable of reason and practising absurd customs meant that the natural resources of those same peoples could reasonably and legitimately be exploited, for the benefit of the whole 'civilized' world. As a pure scientist, Giovanni Canestrini was not interested in Italy's colonial plans, but he did find the declared inferiority of 'savages' convenient. For some time, the evolutionists had begun a desperate search for the missing link between monkeys and men. Canestrini too was greatly interested in anomalies, abnormal births and atavism, all phenomena that suggested a link between man and animals. In the lack of those paleontological findings which were to become so abundant after his death, Canestrini attempted to postulate the existence of a missing link also on a psychic scale, i.e., the 'savage'. If the assumption is that there is a continuity between the most highly evolved animal and the most degraded man, the only way of demonstrating it is the invention of an intermediate phase. But this operation required, on one hand, the attribution of extraordinary levels of intelligence and spirituality to some animals, on the other, a lowering of the degree of humanity of some ethnic groups, such as the Bushmen, stressing their stupidity and brutal characteristics. That the positive end justifies the means is a matter for debate in this case. Certainly, Canestrini perceived the threat of 'social Darwinism', showing concern on the base of an ethic point of view, for which the anthropologist is to be admired.

The aim of this article is to present the reason why Empedocles did not eat meat. I would like to prove that-contrary to the most intuitive assumption-Empedocles' vegetarianism did not result from the belief in reincarnation. In my analysis, I focus especially on B138 in which the poet from Akragas compares animal sacrifices to killing own family members. I try to prove that this fragment does not speak about transmigration, as in Empedocles' view reincarnation does not concern all beings. Moreover, I analyse two other possible reasons, why Empedocles would promote a vegetarian diet. The first one is connected with the belief in the golden age, while the second-the idea that all beings are kin. The last one results from the assumption that there is one spirit penetrating the whole cosmos and connecting humans with animals and plants, as well as from the conviction that all beings were united with each other in the period of the Sphairos. Basing on the extant fragment concerning Empedocles, the last option seems to me as the most plausible.

Die Diskussion um Darwin und den Darwinismus hat in den letzten Jahren wieder erheblich zugenommen. Zurückzuführen ist dies nicht nur auf den durch die große Darwin-Ausgabe möglich gewordenen genauen Einblick in die Herausbildung der Darwinschen Theorie, sondern auch und gerade durch die Veränderungen im evolutionsbiologischen Diskurs seit ungefähr 1970. Denn je stärker die klassische Synthetische Theorie in Erklärungsnot bezüglich ihres eigenen Selbstverständnisses und Programmes geriet, desto stärker erhoffte man sich Aufschluss aus den Werken des Begründers der modernen Evolutionstheorie selbst. Zudem wenden sich Wissenschaftstheoretiker bzw. wissenschaftstheoretisch orientierte Biologen der Rekonstruktion der Darwinschen Theorie mit den heute zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln zu, so dass auch dadurch neue Fragen an die Entwicklung und den Verlauf der evolutionsbiologischen Diskussion provoziert werden.
Zugleich wird aber immer deutlicher, dass es den großen kontinuierlichen und homogenen Strom der Wissenschaftsentwicklung von Darwin ausgehend hin zu unserer Gegenwart nicht gegeben hat: Dass sowohl innerhalb derjenigen Biologen, die sich selbst als Darwinisten verstanden, als auch in dem großen und breiten Spektrum Darwin- und Darwinismus-kritischer biologischer Theorien höchst unterschiedliche und in ihren Grundannahmen divergente Verständnisse von Evolution und deren Mechanismen zu finden sind. Nicht zuletzt betrifft dies die deutschsprachige Tradition, für die noch immer weitgehend ungeklärt ist, ob es in ihr jemals wirklich zu einem adäquaten Verständnis der populationsbiologischen Grundlagen der Evolutionsbiologie gekommen ist, oder ob nicht vielmehr die Dominanz des art-begrifflichen Denkens, unabhängig von den politisch-ideologischen Dimensionen, den Zugang zu Darwins Theorie versperrte.
Mit der Veröffentlichung einer Vorlesung aus dem Nachlass von G. Heberer (weitere Aufbereitungen des Nachlasses sind geplant) soll die Klärung solcher Fragen weiter vorangetrieben werden. Auch eine verstärkte Beschäftigung mit dem Lebenswerk von K. Lorenz erscheint unter diesen Gesichtspunkten dringend erforderlich. Schließlich hoffen wir, dass verstärkt von seiten der Botanik sowohl historische als auch systematische Beiträge im Jahrbuch abgedruckt werden können. Denn insgesamt scheint uns die Diskussion um Evolution immer noch viel zu sehr durch die Zoologie dominiert sein; die zum Teil doch ganz anderen Problemlagen und Diskussionsverläufe in der Botanik finden kaum die ihnen gebührende Aufmerksamkeit.  […]

Mit dieser Studie liegt die erste umfassende Monographie über Leben und Werk Gerhard Heberers vor. In ihr werden die Beiträge Heberers auf den Gebieten der Zoologie, insbesondere der Zoogeographie und Zytologie, der Evolutionsbiologie, Paläoanthropologie und der Geschichte der Biologie dargestellt. Behandelt wird auch die Stellung Heberers in der nationalsozialistischen Ideologie. Ergänzt wird die Monographie durch eine Bibliographie der Schriften Heberers sowie ausgewählte Dokumente.

Egypt does not at first glance appear to be a region ecologically suitable for the viability of a population of beavers (anc. Gk. kastores, Lat. fibri), neither in antiquity nor today. But a group of ancient sources is consistent in linking these animals to the region of the Nile. How can we possibly account for this? My paper aims to demonstrate how an ethnozoological analysis can shed light on this puzzle.


L’Egitto non sembra rappresentare un ambiente ecologicamente adatto alla vita dei castori (gr. kastores, lat. fibri) né oggi né nel mondo antico. Eppure un consistente numero di fonti greche e romane associa questi animali all’area del fiume Nilo. In che modo si può rendere ragione di una simile aporia? Il presente contributo ha lo scopo di mostrare come un’analisi di tipo etnozoologico delle testimonianze antiche possa aiutare a comprendere meglio un quadro apparentemente così complicato.

Views on the history of the museum are contradictory. The present essay summarizes the author’s view on three basic positions: statuses, subordination, and leadership. In order to explain and relate these three positions in the different periods of the museum’s existence, we considered all known previous and subsequent statuses of the museum as an institution, scientific centre, exposition, collection, and a collective.

[Dogs as the subject of interest of French Encyclopédistes. ]
The article discusses how dogs were described by the group of French Enlightenment philosophers known as the Encyclopédistes. While the article in the Encyclopédie was concise, the chapter in the contemporary Histoire naturelle générale et particuliere (Vol. 5, Paris 1755) was broad. On the almost 130 pages its authors, Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon and Jean Louis Daubenton, described dog as a species inseparable from humans, which anatomical "evolution" into breeds was a result of civilisation. The article and complementary illustrations, show not only how dogs were perceived in the 18th century France, but also what one should expect from the thorough encyclopaedic article of the era.