Dr. Nadine Schäfer (Project "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach – Online") and Prof. Dr. Joachim Reitner (Universität Göttingen): Blumenbach’s natural history objects as a driving force for a modern view of evolvement of life.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was an archetype of a scientist in the time of enlightenment and his research philosophy was mainly based on inductive experimental investigations and observations of natural history objects. His deep investigations of these objects allowed him to develop first ideas of a time resolved development of life forms. This research includes for example a great number of ammonites and other fossils from all over the world. Another milestone of Blumenbach’s research is the taxonomic description and evaluation of the African elephant (1797) and the observation that the Siberian woolly mammoth is an independent species within the Elephantidae (1799). Blumenbach’s way of thinking fostered the modern natural sciences and established the first steps of a modern view of evolvement of life.

Talk given at the conference "Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb (1789): «What is life?» in science, philosophy and politics around 1800" in Göttingen, October 14th –15th 2021.