Applied metaphysics?

 

So I just tried to read a 48-page paper titled “Ernst Haeckel´s Discovery of Magosphaera planula: A Vestige of Metazoan Origins?”, published in 2008 in “History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences”, apparently a journal. One of the authors, Andrew Reynolds, is a scholar of religion and philosophy. The other, Norbert Hülsmann, is a zoologist. And yes, their paper was quite hard to read! 

It deals with German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel´s discovery of a curious micro-organism off the Norwegian coast in 1869, a creature Haeckel named Magosphaera planula, the generic name meaning “magician´s ball”. The organism was only observed and studied by the German naturalist himself, and only at this one occasion! Despite this, it played an important part in the evolutionary speculations of both Haeckel and others during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It´s still occasionally mentioned in scientific works (and even on Wikipedia), but only with a huge question mark as to its placement on the tree of life.

In Haeckel´s theories, Magosphaera was first given the rank of a protist (Haeckel apparently regarded protists as a somewhat nebulous group transitional between plants and animals), but was later upgraded to a protozoan (a unicellular animal) of the “blastaea” stage in the German naturalist´s “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” scheme. The fact that Magosphaera had only ever been seen by Haeckel himself could easily be misinterpreted as science fraud, especially since Haeckel have posthumously come under fire for his supposedly fake illustrations of embryos. The two authors are therefore at pains to point out that they are *not* accusing Haeckel of hoaxing. However, they do believe that he made an honest mistake.

The magician´s ball doesn´t really exist. With one exception, no other scientist has claimed to observe anything even remotely similar (the equally dubious species Magosphaera maggii). The authors have actually looked for Magosphaera-like organisms in the North Sea on several occasions, but always without success. They also believe that Haeckel´s illustrations and descriptions of Magosphaera are inconsistent. Haeckel had made other mistaken identifications, something he also admitted. The purported missing link in animal evolution was probably two or three different species of marine organisms temporarily hanging together, perhaps even one kind of organism parasitizing another kind. I haven´t kept up to speed on Haeckel-bashing lately, but I wouldn´t be too surprised if both creationists and Woke evolutionists (who regard the German fellow as a proto-fascist) will nevertheless use this unfortunate little episode to further their respective agendas.

The article initially promises to discuss the social construction and “applied metaphysics” of scientific objects, but there is very little of this in the actual text, suggesting it´s just a nod to popular trends in academic research. Obviously, a marine zoologist can´t be a postmodernist!

With that, I end this little conversation.