interpret have remained the territory of scientists, while poets, dreamers, and philosophers have added value to the lineage of theoretical morphology. Have we stopped dreaming?
When Goethe proposed “Alles ist Blatt” (all is leaf), he was declaring that within its manifold expansions and contractions, the entire plant was made up of a similar and singular structure. Although the plant may formally be perceived as bearing different parts (such as stem and leaf), it may reveal itself to be an inseparable whole. Consequently plants could be conceived of as a model, containing an internal plan, or pattern. The leaves of a plant usually resemble one another, but they differ from species to species, a circumstance first addressed by A. Pyramus de Candolle (1778–1841), through the suggestion of homology. The concept of homology explains both the character of leaf modifications and the similarity of parts that might look very different. Arber suggests that the study of modifications is an essential task of the morphologist, an approach stemming from Goethe and activated by de Candolle, and representing a common emphasis of morphology during her time. Essentially, homology elucidates the common forms that persist in plants as being established by ancestral form, outside of outward shape
Turpin, “The Plant Archetype” in Œuvres d’histoire naturelle de Goethe (1804)
model organism
POPULUS AS URPFLANZE