Page 115 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism
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the science periodical Archiv für Anthropologie (Archives of
Anthropology) that revealed Haeckel's falsifications.
Rutimeyer, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at
Basle University, examined the embryo drawings in
Naturlische Schopfungsgeschichte and Über die Entstehung und
den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts and demonstrated
that the drawings in both books had nothing to do with real-
ity. As Rutimeyer wrote:
Haeckel claims these works to be easy for the scientific layman
to follow, as well as scientific and scholarly. No one will quar-
rel with the first evaluation of the author, but the second qual-
ity is not one that he seriously can claim. These works are
clothed in medieval formalistic garb. There is considerable
manufacturing of scientific evidence. Yet the author has been
very careful not to let the reader become aware of this state of
affairs. 56
Despite this, Darwin and other biologists who supported
him continued to accept Haeckel's drawings as a reference. Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)
And this encouraged Haeckel to try to make embryology a
strong support for Darwinism. His observations produced no
such support, but he regarded his drawings as more impor-
tant than his observations. In following years, he made a se-
ries of comparative drawings of embryos and composed
charts comparing the embryos of fish, salamanders, frogs,
chickens, rabbits and human beings. The interesting thing
about these side-by-side charts was that the embryos of these
various creatures closely resembled one another, at first, but
slowly began to differentiate in the course of their develop-
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