JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
In his long and vastly productive scientific life, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919 ) produced this extraordinary work, Kunstformen der Natur, over a five year period from 1899 to 1904, a set of 100 images being published in 1904 (though a result of a long lifetime of work). Haeckel was a busy man working over a number of specialties, writing more than 40 books and a large number of contributions to scientific publication. He is perhaps best remembered early on in his career for a popular defense of Darwinism, writing Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, (1868, nine years after the publication of the Origin, and translated into English as The History of Creation in 1876) which was a successful attempt to get Darwin's complex ideas into public discussion. But all I want to do here is to surface his Kunstformen, which evidently served as a sort of wish-book for the imagination among many modern artists.
And so to the examples:
The phaeodaria:
and another example of phaeodaria:
The Lichenes:
And the Stephoidea
And the ascidiae:
And some of the rest, which included all manner of other living things, big and small. The micrscopic organisms (and black-and-white) to me are the most fantastic, though the renderings of jsut about everyhting in the work are superb, and their placement, the design of each plate, is just magnificent.
For a collection of excellent 300 dpi scans see here: Kurt Stüber's Biolib. The following images are located here.
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Sea anemone (Actiniae)
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Anthomedusa (Anthomedusae)
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Antelope (Antilopina)
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Arachnid (Arachnida)
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Ascidian (Ascidiae)
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Frog (Batrachia)
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Turtle (Chelonia)
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Ciliate (Ciliata)
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Annelid (Chaetopoda)
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Bat (Chiroptera)
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Conifer (Coniferae)
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Copepod (Copepoda)
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Box jellyfish (Cubomedusae)
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Decapods (Decapoda)
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Cephalopod (Gamochonia)
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Fern (Filicinae)
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Lizard (Lacertilia)
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Moss (Muscinae)
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Nepenthe (Nepenthaceae)
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Nudibranch (Nudibranchia)
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Trachylina (Narcomedusae)
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Orchid (Orchidae)
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Boxfish (Ostraciontes)
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Prosobranchia (obsolete classification)
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Polycystine (Spumellaria)
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Radiolarian (Stephoidea)
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Moth (Tineida)
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Hummingbird (Trochilidae)
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Tubularia (Tubulariae)
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