Page 191 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Ernst Haeckel: (Kunstformen der Natur 1899-1904) + Genealogical Tree of Life from 1861 (left)
Haeckel’s insights - and the clear and often very beautiful illustrations and diagrams he prepared to illustrate them - set an exemplary standard for scientific explanation and explication. These engraved colour illustrations were to have a profound effect on early modernist designers and crafts- practitioners in the Art Nouveau (Jugendstil), the Weiner Werkstatte, and late Arts & Crafts period. In 1866 Haeckel coined the word ‘ecology’- to describe ‘the science of relations between the organism and the surrounding outer world’. These 19th century pioneers were glimpsing a truth that could later be fleshed-out with further scientific observational evidence. They had the considerable advantage of living in an age where a polymathic range of knowledge was an advantage, especially in glimpsing the holistic or systemic nature of complexity. Haeckel was not only a zoologist and naturalist, but also a physician, marine biologist, teacher and importantly an artist of considerable talent. Haeckel was also a scientific explorer in the line of Charles Darwin, Joseph Banks, George Forster, Alexander von Humboldt, and Benjamin Franklin. Haeckel’s vision of mankind’s ‘household’ (oikos in Greek) in nature that led to his coining the word ‘ecosystem’ was illustrated in his Genealogical Tree (or ‘Stem Tree’) of 1861 (upper left). The insights that we live in an interdependent system with each other and with nature were expressed in several forms over the next century by philosopher-scientists as diverse as Haeckel, Kropotkin, Vernadsky, Stewart Brand, Maturana, Kevin Kelly, and later epitomised in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis.
Haeckel was clearly a remarkable man, equally talented in scientific observation, classification and interpretation, as well as being a highly successful artists-scientific illustrator. His Tree of Life (upper left) is a glimpse of his visual thinking as he studies the interdependencies - and synergies and symbiotics - of Nature, and comes to invent the word ‘ecosystem’ to describe the interconnectedness of living things and their living and not-so-inert environment.
See also: + Henry David Thoreau: Walden:1862 + Marianne North: Botanical Paintings: 1891 + Ed Ricketts: Between Pacific Tides: 1939 + Darwin & Wallace: Origin of Species: 1859 + Vladimir Vernadsky: Biosphere:1926 + Peter Kroptkin: Mutual Aid: 1902 + James Lovelock: Gaia: 1975 + Fritjof Capra: The Web of Life: 1996 + Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela: The Tree of Knowledge: 1987