Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
JOHN R. BAKER
phnners has been told elsewhere2 and need not be repeated here. For the
Pment Purpose it is only necessary to note that throughout the long con-
troversy, no mention was ever made of the discussion of a si血lar topic in
the previous century・ Yet die Fpeiheit der Wissenschaft had been a familiar
phrase to many, well over half a century before Professor Polanyi wrote his
ardcle.
TLe oblivion into which the earlier controversy had fallen is all the more
inexplicable inview of the celebrity-onemight almost say notoriety-of
the two protagonists・ It is surprlSlng that a head-on clash between such
・contestants as Haeckel and Virchow should be forgotten. The encounter
vas memorable in more ways than one-not least because the two men
night have been expected to take their places on the same side 。f the
battlefield・ For these two masterfd personalities of the biological world
had much in common.
Virchow was by thirteen years the senior・Asa young doctor he was
由ply shocked when he saw for himself, in an epidemic of typhus, how
89