On 5 November 1836, 23-year-old biologist, writer, and revolutionary Georg Buechner presented a lecture to the philosophical faculty at the University of Zuerich entitled "On Cranial Nerves." In it he introduced a distinction between the teleological conception of nature and one that he called "philosophical." The former, which he claimed was most prominent in England and France, considered the purpose (telos) of organs to be their raison d'etre; the latter, which he held was characteristic of German thought, interpreted existing organic forms as manifestations of an underlying generative principle, or Urgesetz. Buechner argued that the philosophical conception of nature, whenever it managed to escape the dogmatism of a priori philosophizing, had led the way to such impressive advances as Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, Lorenz Oken's vertebral theory of the skull, and the idea of the archetype.
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