Untersuchungen zur physiologischen Morphologie der Thiere ...
Publisher: Verlag von Georg Hertz
Published: 1891
Place of publication: Würzburg
Language: ger
Subjects: Morphology (Animals).
Notes: "Jacques Loeb (1859-1924), German born American physiologist, obtained his M.D. at Strassburg in 1884.  Loeb came to the US and in 1891 joined the faculty of the University of Chicago.  In 1902 he transferred to UCLA and in 1910 joined the staff of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York.  Loeb was a mechanist at the time when mechanism was reaching new heights, thanks to the work of Sherrington and Pavlov on reflexes.  Loeb tried to show that the tropisms that govern plant behaviour might be applied to simple animals and that, indeed it was possible to elaborate such behaviour into quite complicated structures.  He even suggested that man's morals and ethics were but the products of tropism combinations.  In 1899 Loeb attracted wide attention when he first succeeded in achieving artificial parthenogenesis.  Undoubtedly, part of the interest in this work amoung laymen was founded on the grisly (but unjustified) thought that the male sex might turn out to be superfluous.  A fear which was to return in the 1970's in the female liberation movement with equally unjustified superstitions.  The long term impact of Loeb's work and orientation was substantial.  Jennings, his chief critic on tropisms, always affirmed his indebtedness to Loeb as the great pioneer in the objective analysis of behaviour,  the man who first made the study of behaviour a rigorously experimental science.  While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, J.B. Watson, the founder of behaviourism in psychology, chose Loeb as his thesis directory and Loeb may justly be described as Watson's greatest precursor in exemplifying and proselytizing for this attitude."
Table of contents: value: Part I. Ueber Heteromorphose.; value: Part II. Organbildung und Wachsthum.