Teleology as a mistress 9 Sep 2009 Okay, this is bugging me so I’m going to crowdsource it. Who first wrote this: Teleology is a mistress without whom no biologist can live, but with whom none wishes to be seen in public? There are many versions of this, ascribed variously to J. B. S. Haldane, Frits Went, but I’m fairly sure it was Ernst von Brücke. One source cites Asa Gray as the origin of the quote. Another has the following: Once he has grasped this, he will no longer have to look at teleology as a lady without whom he cannot live but with whom he would not appear in public. E. von Brücke Others just give the quote, in various versions. Any ideas? I cannot find a source, and I even went to online versions of his works in German. Biology History Philosophy Quotes Science Quotes
General Science Some more on Toulmin 12 Dec 2009 The History of the Philosophy of Science list has been unusually active, and even more unusually fairly restrained and complimentary, in discussing Stephen Toulmin’s significance. One point, made by Avner Cohen, is that Toulmin himself had given an assessment of his work and his modus operandi in an interview in… Read More
Biology The Demon Spencer 16 Jun 200922 Jun 2018 When I first started to read philosophy and history I heard about this demon. His name was Herbert Spencer, and he was famous for three things: Incomprehensible prose Coining “Survival of the Fittest”, and Coming up with a “devil take the hindmost” laissez faire political philosophy that was called “social… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design The problem of foreknowledge 28 Jun 2010 So, following on from my previous post on theism and science, let’s consider another aspect of the problem: foreknowledge. How could God know what would occur if the universe is fundamentally, by which we mean at the quantum mechanical level, indeterminate? We know from chaos theory (and chaos is determinate,… Read More
Two books of quotations (The Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither’s Naturally Speaking) ascribe it–as “Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can live. Yet he is ashamed to show himself with her in public”–to von Brücke, but both cite English-language sources from the 1950s, rather than anything written by von Brücke himself.
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has this citation: Brücke, Ernst Wilhelm von 1819–92 German physiologist 1. Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can live. Yet he is ashamed to show himself with her in public. Quoted in H.A. Krebs, ‘Excursion into the Borderland of Biochemistry and Philosophy’ , Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1954, 95, pp.45. I have seen it or something like it in various places, as the earliest direct quote, but I cannot get access to a copy of the Bulletin, and the JH site only goes to 1949. Can any reader find it?
Your first source cites Gray as quoting someone, possibly von Brücke. The quotation is pieced together; the second half is from a letter, but I can’t find the first half, containing the quotation, in his letters.
A found 2 German sources that give the reference in German. “Die Teleologie ist wie eine Dame, ohne die kein Biologe leben kann. Er scheut sich jedoch, mit Ihr in der Öffentlichkeit gesehen zu werden. https://books.google.at/books?id=-QLRBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA140&dq=teleologie+ernst++br%C3%BCcke&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAWoVChMIuYOZw7yUyAIVhlYaCh3l5gBU#v=onepage&q=teleologie%20ernst%20%20br%C3%BCcke&f=false