Nyhart Lynn K
Department of the History of Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1393, USA.
J Morphol. 2002 Apr;252(1):2-14. doi: 10.1002/jmor.10012.
A century ago, Carl Gegenbaur's program of vertebrate evolutionary morphology faced its greatest challenges. The controversy over the evolutionary origin of the vertebrate paired limbs between 1875 and 1906 illustrates the failure of the traditional methods of comparative anatomy and embryology (supported by Haeckel's biogenetic law) to choose between different phylogenetic hypotheses. The controversy over morphology's status as science intensified at the turn of the twentieth century, when the legitimacy of historical explanation itself as a mode of scientific understanding came under fire. Gegenbaur's intellectual grandson, Hermann Braus, sought to defend the legitimacy of phylogenetic reconstruction while updating it to include experimental and causal-analytical approaches, but was unable to sustain a viable synthetic research program. The article concludes with reflections on approaches to the past used by historians and evolutionary morphologists.
一个世纪前，卡尔· Gegenbaur的脊椎动物进化形态学计划面临着最大的挑战。1875年至1906年间关于脊椎动物成对肢体进化起源的争论表明，传统的比较解剖学和胚胎学方法（由海克尔的生物发生律支持）在不同的系统发育假说之间做出选择时失败了。在二十世纪之交，当历史解释本身作为一种科学理解模式的合法性受到抨击时，关于形态学作为一门科学的地位的争论愈演愈烈。Gegenbaur的学术孙辈赫尔曼·布劳斯试图捍卫系统发育重建的合法性，同时对其进行更新，使其包括实验和因果分析方法，但未能维持一个可行的综合研究计划。文章最后对历史学家和进化形态学家研究过去的方法进行了反思。
