About the intermediate jaw of humans and animals

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About the inter-jaw of humans and animals is a scientific treatise by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . In this Goethe was able to demonstrate that the intermediate jaw ( Os intermaxillare ) is present not only in animals but also in humans. This eliminated the supposedly missing bone as a distinguishing feature between humans and monkeys.

content

The manuscript consists of the text and five panels on which skull bones and skull bone fragments of various animals and people are depicted. In the text, Goethe explains that the intermaxillary bone was already known to the ancients , but was previously considered to be a distinction between humans and monkeys, since humans did not have it. First he then describes the bones in the animals, which are different due to the different eating habits. With the help of the anatomist Justus Christian Loder , he then compiled a list of the Latin names.

Then he describes the individual panels. This shows the bones of the following animals:

He now also compares the different forms of the intermediate jaw and comes to the conclusion that this is present everywhere (also in humans), even if it is clearly overgrown in humans. It is best seen in the embryo.

Publications

The actual manuscript was created in March 1784. This was published in 1786. In 1820 the text (without the plates) was published again in the booklet “On Morphology” under the title “Man and animals alike have a bone between the upper jaw”. In 1831 the text with the tablets was printed in the “Negotiations of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian Academy of Natural Scientists”.

background

Goethe had long suspected that the intermaxillary bone also existed in humans. Together with Loder he was able to prove the bones in the human embryo on March 27, 1784 in the anatomy tower in Jena . He immediately wrote this to Johann Gottfried Herder :

"I have found - neither gold nor silver, but what gives me an unspeakable pleasure - the os intermaxillare in people!"

On November 17, 1784 he sent the treatise to Karl Ludwig von Knebel to get his opinion on it.

After the publication there was approval, but also criticism of the work. It was not until 1831 that it was scientifically recognized and printed by the Leopoldin-Carolinische Akademie .

Goethe was probably not aware that the bone had already been described several times, most recently in 1780 by the French doctor Félix Vicq d'Azyr .

literature

  • Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio : From the intermaxillary bone to the idea of ​​the type. Goethe as a natural scientist in the years 1780–1786. In: Nova Acta Leopoldina Volume 18, Number 126. Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1956.
  • Manfred Wenzel: Experiment from comparative bone theory that the interstitial bone of the upper jaw is common to humans and other animals - osteological writings. In: Goethe manual. Volume 3, Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, pp. 673-690.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Liselotte Bäuerle Lohrer: Goethe: Schriften zur Morphologie II, page 854, 855, JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachhaben, Stuttgart
  2. ^ Goethe to Johann Gottfried Herder, March 27, 1784; in: Complete Works. Letters, diaries and conversations. Forty volumes. Edited by Friedmar Apel [among others]. Department II. Volume 2: Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The first Weimar decade. Letters, diaries and conversations from November 7, 1775 to September 2, 1786. Ed. By Hartmut Reinhardt / M. 1997 (Library of German Classics 140), p. 504.
  3. ↑ Bernhard Peyer: Goethe's vortex theory of the skull. In: Neujahrsblatt published by the Natural Research Society in Zurich for 1950, Issue 152, p. 28. Commission publisher Gebr. Fretz AG, Zurich 1950.
  4. ↑ Hermann Bräuning-Oktavio : From the intermaxillary bone to the idea of ​​the type. Goethe as a natural scientist in the years 1780–1786. In: Nova Acta Leopoldina Volume 18, Number 126. Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1956.
  5. ↑ Klaus Seehafer: My life, a single adventure - Johann Wolfgang Goethe, biography , p. 180. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1998.