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From Histories of Life: Searching for Order
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Owen, Nature of Limbs
Sandwiched between those who believed species were separately created and those who believed species evolved, English anatomist Richard Owen argued that all animals were variations of four archetypes (ideal types). This large illustration shows one of Owen’s archetypes in the upper right. He believed this ideal type existed only in the mind of God, serving as a blueprint for all the other variations shown. The theory of archetypes was his answer to a larger question about the order of nature: What makes groups of animals so similar and yet so different?
Richard Owen (1804–1892). On the Nature of Limbs.... London: John van Voorst, 1849.
