De Utrechtse zoölogie rond 1900: van morfologie naar de vergelijkende fysiologie

Abstract

Zoology at Utrecht university about 1900: from morphology to comparative physiologyIn 1876 the new University Education Act stipulated that instruction in zoology ought to comprise zoology s.s. (i.e. systematics, geographical distribution and external appearance of animals), comparative anatomy and physiology. This prescription hardly produced any effect with the Dutch professors of zoology. They continued to neglect the functions of the animal organism. During A.A.W. Hubrecht's professorship at Utrecht university (1882- 1910) the teaching of zoology was dominated by the needs for establishing the tree of animal descent. Hubrecht was mainly interested in comparative anatomy and embryology, that is in those parts of zoology which were considered essential for phylogenetic reconstructions. Hubrecht's successor, his pupil H.F. Nierstrasz, changed this situation and was the first to implement the Act of 1876. Although a morphologist by training and vocation, he realized that zoology was more than the study of animal form. In 1913 he recruited the German zoologist H.J. Jordan to teach comparative physiology to the biology students at Utrecht university. Contrary to Allen's thesis (Life science in the twentieth century) that the emergence of modern biology was characterized by a revolt against morphology and its method, the case of Jordan makes it clear that there was a considerable continuity. Jordan attacked the hegemony of morphology and its descriptive techniques but did not reject them. He considered zoology as a science concerned with form and function which needed both description and causal analysis (experimentation) to solve its problems.