Laws of the world organism

‘Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.’ This is from the diary of Karl August Möbius, an influential German zoologist born two centuries ago today. There are no published diaries kept by Möbius, but an American academic, Lynn K. Nyhart, quotes from the diaries in her celebrated book on the history of natural science in Germany. 

Möbius was born on 7 February 1825 in Eilenburg, Prussia, the only child of Johann Heinrich Möbius, a dancing teacher who died when Karl was just three, and his mother who was a descendant of Martin Luther. He was educated at home until the age of 12-13 when he was sent away to a private training college to prepare for a career in primary school teaching. From 1844 to 1849 he taught at Seesen in the Harz Mountains in Northern Germany. He went to the University of Berlin to study natural sciences under Johannes Muller, then took up teaching again at the Johanneum Grammar School in Hamburg. His continuing studies in the natural sciences gained him a reputation that led to a post at the Hamburg Museum of Natural History. In 1855, Möbius married Helene Meyer, and they had three children. 

In 1863, Möbius cofounded the first German sea water aquarium, in Hamburg. In 1868, shortly after passing his doctoral examination at the University of Halle, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel. There he devised and opened a zoology institute which would for decades be considered a model for such establishments. Between 1868 and 1870, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Agricultural Affairs in Prussia to conduct research on the Bay of Kiel oyster beds. This led to his groundbreaking work Die Auster und die Austernwirtschaft (The Oyster and Oyster Farming) in 1877. In this, he introduced the concept of ‘biocenosis’ or ‘living community,’ describing the interdependence of species in an ecosystem.

In the mid-1870s, Möbius participated in scientific expeditions, including a journey to Mauritius and the Seychelles in 1874-1875, which resulted in a comprehensive review of the fauna in that area. In 1888, he became the director of the zoological collections of the Natural History Museum of Berlin, and Professor of Systematic and Geographical Zoology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University, also in Berlin, where he taught until he retired in 1905 at the age of 80. He died three years later. More information can be found at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Kiel University

Although there is no evidence of any published diaries, Möbius did keep a diary from 1844 to 1849 while living in the Harz mountains. This is described and quoted from in Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany by Lynn K. Nyhart (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Some pages can be previewed at Internet Archive.

In the book, Nyhart examines various responses that coalesced into the so-called ‘biological perspective’, including: the transformation of natural history practices; changes in museum displays; developments in classroom education; and the emergence of the modern zoo. In particular, she highlights the contributions of key figures such as Karl Möbius, who articulated the concept of the ‘living community’. The work is praised for being wide-ranging, closely argued, and very readable for it goes beyond just tracing the history of a scientific concept, offering insights into the broader cultural and institutional contexts of late 19th-century Germany

Here is one extract about Möbius and his diary.

‘During his time there, from 1844 to 1849, [Möbius] kept a diary that both recorded his love of nature and afforded him a chance to practice his writing - a form of conscious self-improvement and self-cultivation - as he strove tirelessly to prove himself. In the diary’s pages he alternated rhapsodies over his hikes in the mountains with admonishments to himself to be a better man. As he voraciously read history and nature writing, and studied English and the classical languages in his spare hours, he sought to live up to a standard of virtue that would overcome his resentment of his poverty. “Cannot the privation wrought by poverty and the disdain brought on by underestimation and misjudgment lead the spirit [den Geist] to depend on itself and to drive it to be enough for itself?” he agonized in September 1847. “Thoughts, feelings of inspiration, and pure will: these are the opinions that will break through the final barriers to draw us into the inspiring center of the All, into the deity.”

His communion with nature, which offered him considerable spiritual sustenance, was deepened by reading Humboldt. “Great Humboldt!” he gushed a few months later. “With the purest, most warmhearted enthusiasm you [Du] have penetrated into the unity [Zusammenhang] of the world, and in your Kosmos you have given to your race [deinem Geschlechte] the treasure of your spirit, your great knowledge, in clear, poetic language drenched with the warmth of your heart.” The human race “gazes in amazement at your work and wants to thank you on its knees.” 

Reading Shakespeare and Goethe inspired him to similar heights; their works allowed him to imagine himself “on the throne of the world,” with a view of God’s laws of eternal human nature. From this vantage point, he forgot his individual existence and felt part of a larger, God-given order. One route to this sublimation was science: “Science [die Wissenschaft] is the most beautiful bride. He whom she has once kissed is caught in her magic.” 

These youthful yearnings for connection and unity would persist in his private writing as preoccupations with community and self-abnegation and may be viewed as the first, ill-formed inklings of what would emerge in scientific form years later as his living-community concept.’

Here is a second extract.

‘By 1848 he was reading a pedagogical text called Education toward a Public Spirit (Erziehung zum Gemeingeist), whose author argued that philosophy was to play a very minor role in his proposed reformed “Naturgymnasium.” “Here I must object,” Möbius wrote in his diary “Shouldn’t the student of modern subjects [Realschiiler] learn from geology, physics, chemistry, etc., the laws of the world organism? The perceived unity of the world is the most magnificent event in the study of nature, it is the content of all true philosophy; for even the mind and its development, which philosophy in its narrow sense has considered up until now, is itself a production of nature.” ’

And here is a direct quotation by Nyhart from another diary kept by Möbius apparently between 1861 and 1863.

27 February 1863

‘When the son of a craftsman in a small town has come so far through his own work that he is counted among the more capable teachers and research scholars in a large city, he should act content if he is not granted a wished-for highest scientific position. He may keep working on with the accustomed effort, on the side of his practical profession, so that he never forgets his heritage. It is easy for us to consider ourselves more independent of the whole than we are. But our being follows on all sides from our birth, childhood, and course of development. We only want to be taken by others as we are in the present, and yet they always see, as well, how we got here.’