Last week, I took a trip down to San Francisco to visit my brother. While there we tried to see the major sights of the area, and this
included a trip to the
Monte Ray Aquarium. It was fun, and there were lots of neat animals, but in the gift shop I picked up a book by Ernst
Haeckel, called "Art Forms in Nature". I had heard of the scientist before, he is frequently used in those poorly made creationist arguments, so I was intrigued to see his work.
I thought it was beautiful and amazing. Not only is it a great scientific cataloging of marine life, but the pictures are wonderful works of art in their own right. He manages to combine organic details with an almost mathematical attention to symmetry and form. I found it
fascinating, and have included some plates from the book for you to look at:
2 comments:
Wow, looks pretty amazing. What is said about him in creationist circles?
He had a tendancy to embellish his drawings with what he wanted to focus on, rather than strictly reproduce what he was trying to draw. In this respect he was a bit more of an artist than a scientist, like I pointed out here the focus on symmetry, which probably does not completely reflect reality.
In addition to this, he advocated a theory that animals including humans, went through the steps of evolution during development in the womb. He drew pictures of fetuses and emphasized this (showing stuff like gills). This theory was proven incorrect, and since his drawing of fetuses were not accurate, creationist like to talk about how a supporter of darwin was wrong. They also claim he was convicted of fraud and stuff, but that is not true.
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