Carl Vogt

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Carl Vogt
File:Carl Vogt NYPL 1158509 (cropped).jpg
Vogt c. 1870
Born 5 July 1817 (1817-07-05)
Gießen, Grand Duchy of Hesse
Died 5 May 1895 (1895-05-06) (aged 77)
Geneva, Switzerland
Nationality GermanSwiss
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School German materialism[1]
Institutions University of Giessen
University of Geneva
Main interests
Philosophy of science, political philosophy
Notable ideas
Polygenism
Influenced

August Christoph Carl Vogt (German: [foːkt]; 5 July 1817 – 5 May 1895) was a German scientist, philosopher, popularizer of science, and politician who emigrated to Switzerland. Vogt published a number of notable works on zoology, geology and physiology. All his life he was engaged in politics, in the German Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–49 and later in Switzerland.[5]

Early life

File:BoulevardCarlVogtGeneva-CriticismOfRacism RomanDeckert23062022.jpg
Street sign in Geneva with a poster denouncing Vogt's theories as white-supremacist, criticising the naming of the street, official buildings etc. after him and the presence of his bust in front of the university

Vogt was born in Giessen, the son of Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, professor of clinics, and Louise Follenius. His maternal uncle was Charles Follen.[6] From 1833 to 1836, he studied medicine at the University of Giessen, and continued his training in Berne, Switzerland, earning his PhD. in 1839. He then worked with Louis Agassiz in Neuchâtel.[7]

Career

In 1847 he became professor of zoology at the University of Giessen, and in 1852 professor of geology and afterwards also of zoology at the University of Geneva. His earlier publications were on zoology. He dealt with the Amphibia (1839), Reptiles (1840), with Mollusca and Crustacea (1845) and more generally with the invertebrate fauna of the Mediterranean (1854).[8] In 1842, during his time with Louis Agassiz, he discovered the mechanism of apoptosis, the programmed cell death, while studying the development of the tadpole of the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans). Charles Darwin mentions Vogt's support for the theory of evolution in the introduction to his The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

Vogt was a proponent of scientific materialism and atheism,[9] eager to engage in public debates with philosophical and scientific opponents, such as in his work Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft of 1855, which was reprinted four times the same year.[10]

Vogt defended the theory of polygenist evolution; he rejected the monogenist beliefs of most Darwinists and instead believed that each race had evolved from a different type of ape.[11] He wrote the White race was a separate species from Negroes. In Chapter VII of his Lectures on Man (1864), he compared the Negro to the White race and described them as “two extreme human types”. The differences between them, he claimed, are greater than those between two species of ape; and this proved that Negroes are a separate species from Whites.[12] He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1869.[13] He died in Geneva at the age of 77.

Politics

Vogt was active in German politics and was a left-wing representative in the Frankfurt Parliament. Karl Marx scathingly replied to attacks by Carl Vogt in his book Herr Vogt (Mister Vogt) in 1860.[14] Marx's defenders pointed to the fact that, years later (1871), records published after the fall of the Second Empire proved that Vogt had been indeed secretly in the pay of the French Emperor.[15]

Honors

The city of Geneva, Switzerland named a boulevard (Boulevard Carl-Vogt) after Vogt and by erected a memorial bust in the park of the University of Geneva.[16]

Works

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  • An English version of his Lectures on Man: his Place in Creation and in the History of the Earth was published by the Anthropological Society of London in 1864.[8]

Notes

  1. Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 165: "During the 1850s German ... scientists conducted a controversy known ... as the materialistic controversy. It was specially associated with the names of Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner" and p. 173: "Frenchmen were surprised to see Büchner and Vogt. ... [T]he French were surprised at German materialism".
  2. The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, Vol. 70, 1923, p. 184.
  3. Nicolaas A. Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography, University of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 54.
  4. John Powell, Derek W. Blakeley, Tessa Powell (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, "Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich (1849–1936)."
  5. Andreas W. Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998, pp. 13, 15, 25, 160, 210, 254, 277, 289–90, 294–97, 355, 357, 377, 386–87, 393, 398–99, 418, 426, 430, 451, 456, 514–15, including a short biography.
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  7. Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung, p. 514.
  8. 8.0 8.1  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainLua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. Spencer, Nick. Atheists: The Origin of the Species. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
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  11. Colin Kidd, The forging of races: race and scripture in the Protestant Atlantic world, 1600-2000, 2006, p. 58.
  12. Gustav Jahoda, Images of savages: ancients [sic] roots of modern prejudice in Western culture, 1999, p. 83.
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  14. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. "After the Emperor’s fall in 1870, the republican government of Thiers published documents from the archives of the imperial government which included a receipt signed by Vogt for 40,000 francs from the secret fund of Napoleon" Karl Marx on Herr Vogt - Timely Excerpts from a Classic
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

References

  • Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998, ISBN 3-486-56337-8.
  • Fredrick Gregory: Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany, Springer, Berlin u.a. 1977, ISBN 90-277-0760-X

External links