Transcendental anatomy

Transcendental anatomy, also known as philosophical anatomy, was a form of comparative anatomy that sought to find ideal patterns and structures common to all organisms in nature. The term originated from naturalist philosophy in the German provinces, and culminated in Britain especially by scholars Robert Knox and Richard Owen, who drew from Goethe and Lorenz Oken. From the 1820s to 1859, it persisted as the medical expression of natural philosophy before the Darwinian revolution.

Amongst its various definitions, transcendental anatomy has four main tenets:

  • the presupposition of an Ideal Plan among the multiplicity of visible structures in the animal and plant kingdom, and that the Plan determines function
  • the Ideal Plan acted as a force for the maintenance of anatomical uniformity (as opposed to diversity-inducing forces of Nature)
  • the belief that this a priori Plan was discoverable
  • the desire to discover universal Laws underlying anatomical differences.
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