1. Oppenheimer, J. M., ‘Analysis of development: Problems, concepts, and their history’, in B. H. Willier, P. A. Weiss and V. Hamburger (eds.), Analysis of Development (Philadelphia: Saunders Press, 1955), pp. 1–24.
2. That natural forms can be the subject of aesthetics is emphasized in Kant’s Critique of Judgement, trans, by J. H. Bernard (NY: Macmillan, 1914), pp. 177–181. He specified the such aesthetics would concern the “beautiful forms of nature” and not the “charms that she is wont to combine so abundantly with them….” Moreover, if the beauty of natural forms interests a man, “we have reason for attributing to him, at least, a basis for a good moral character”. As will be discussed later, Kant’s combination of teleology and organicism had great appeal to embryologists.
3. The Schotte example is quoted (with illustration) in Sander, K., ‘The role of genes in ontogenesis’, in T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski and C. C. Wylie (eds.), A History of Embryology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 363–395.
4. Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (NY: Viking Press, 1983) has pointed out that science criticism should exist parallel to literary criticism, but likening science to art criticism has also been made by the Princeton embryologist, J. T. Bonner. He notes that readers of his book on Morphogenesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 6–7, might think that in discussing the components of the embryo, he will lose the main point in all the details. He continues that “I will be put in the same category as an art historian who analyzes the perspective of a Flemish master and is accused of failing to see that the pictures themselves are great and beautiful. But the chances are excellent that the art historian will first have been motivated by the beauty, and I suspect that those who study nature, even if only subconsciously, were also first motivated by noble emotions”.
5. Mayr, E., ‘Cause and effect in biology’, Science 134: 1501–1506, 1961.