{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 30/e01/p035","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"How great the prejudices are that the idea of evolution had to face was clearly shown by the reception which Caspar Friedrich Wolff's *Theoria Generationis*, which appeared in 1759, met with among the men of science who accepted Haller's views. It was demonstrated in this book that in the human ovum not even a trace of the form of the developed organism is present, but that its development consists in a series of *new* formations. Wolff defended the idea of a real evolution, an epigenesis, a becoming from what is not present, as against the view of seeming evolution. Haeckel says of Wolff's book that it “belongs, in spite of its small size and awkward language, to the most valuable writings in the whole field of biological literature. ...” Nevertheless, this remarkable book had at first no success whatever. Although scientific studies, as a result of the stimulus imparted by Linnaeus, flourished mightily at that time, although botanists and zoologists were soon counted no longer by dozens but by hundreds, yet no one troubled himself about Wolff's *Theory of Generation*. The few, however, who had read it, held it to be fundamentally wrong, and especially Haller. Although Wolff proved by the most accurate observations the truth of epigenesis, and disproved the current hypotheses of the preformation doctrine, nevertheless the “exact” physiologist Haller remained the most zealous follower of the latter and rejected the correct teaching of Wolff with his dictatorial edict: “There is no becoming” ( *Nulla est epigenesis*!). With so much power did human thinking set itself against a view, of which Haeckel (in his *Anthropogenesis*) remarks: “To-day we can hardly any longer call this theory of epigenesis a *theory*, because we have fully convinced ourselves of the correctness of the *fact*, and can demonstrate it at any moment with the help of the microscope.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. Haeckel and His Opponents","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":306,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/30/e01/p035","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"TwoEssays","book_title":null,"publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Articles/GA030/English/TwoEssays/TwoEss_e01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/30/e01/p035"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/30/e01/p035","paragraph_aligned":true}],"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"e01","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 30/e01/p022","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/30/e01/p022"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":274,"en_words":306,"ratio":1.12,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 30/e01/p022","passage_number":22,"text":"Wie groß die Vorurteile sind, die der Entwickelungsidee entgegengebracht werden, das zeigte sich deutlich an der Aufnahme, die Caspar Friedrich Wolffs 1759 erschienene «Theoria generationis» bei den zu Hallers Ansichten sich bekennenden Narurforschern fand. In dieser Schrift wurde gezeigt, daß im menschlichen Ei noch nicht eine Spur von der Form des ausgebildeten Organismus vorhanden ist, sondern daß dessen Entwickelung in einer Kette von *Neubildungen* besteht. Wolff verteidigte die Idee einer wirklichen Entwickelung, der Epigenesis, eines Werdens von noch nicht Vorhandenem, gegenüber der Ansicht von der scheinbaren Entwickelung, der Einschachtelung und Auswickelung. Haeckel sagt von Wolffs Schrift, sie «gehört trotz ihres geringen Umfanges und ihrer schwerfälligen Sprache zu den wertvollsten Schriften im ganzen Gebiete der biologischen Literatur...» Trotzdem hatte diese merkwürdige Schrift zunächst gar keinen Erfolg. Obgleich die naturwissenschaftlichen Studien infolge der von Linné gegebenen Anregung zu jener Zeit mächtig emporblühten, obgleich Botaniker und Zoologen bald nicht mehr nach Dutzenden, sondern nach Hunderten zählten, bekümmerte sich doch niemand um Wolffs Theorie der Generation. Die wenigen aber, die sie gelesen hatten, hielten sie für grundfalsch, so besonders Haller. Obgleich Wolff durch die exaktesten Beobachtungen die Wahrheit der Epigenesis bewies und die in der Luft schwebenden Hypothesen der Präformationstheorie widerlegte, blieb dennoch der «exakte» Physiologe Haller der eifrigste Anhänger der letzteren und verwarf die richtige Lehre von Wolff mit seinem diktatorischen Machtspruche: «Es gibt kein Werden» (Nulla est epigenesis!). Mit solcher Macht widersetzte sich das Denken einer Ansicht, von der Haeckel (in seiner «Anthropogenie») findet: «Wir können heutzutage diese Theorie der Epigenesis kaum mehr *Theorie* nennen, weil wir uns von der Richtigkeit der *Tatsache* völlig überzeugt haben und dieselbe jeden Augenblick mit Hilfe des Mikroskopes demonstrieren können.»","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":274,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/30/e01/p022"}],"english":["GA 30/e01/p035"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":274,"en_words":306,"ratio":1.12,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.14,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":17236,"original_word_count":15055,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"TwoEssays","book_title":null,"publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Articles/GA030/English/TwoEssays/TwoEss_e01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 30/e01/p022"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. 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