Readers of Haeckel's Embryos will get the initial impression that it is talking about the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and the controversies surrounding his iconic image of developing embryos for promoting Darwinian evolution. And this impression is correct, as the book elaborates the fierce arguments through time, from the first publication of the image in the nineteenth century to US creationists' attacks on textbooks in the twenty-first century. However, Haeckel's Embryos tells of far more than Darwinism, embryology, or a historical case of scientific controversies. Its real focus is on exploring the culture of visual representation in the sciences and communications industry. To achieve this objective, Nick Hopwood chooses Haeckel's embryo image, with its rich history of disputations as a canonical or infamous picture. By tracking the genesis of a scientific image, Hopwood tries to find out "how pictures of knowledge succeed and fail, become accepted and cause trouble" (3).
To start with, Hopwood vividly reconstructs the context of visual culture in biological sciences before and during Haeckel's early life. He traces two factors in German cultural and social milieus: the need for illustrations as visual aids in German universities and the rise of popular science. Educational reformers had since the late eighteenth century established the importance of visual display in German university teachings, as reflected in the watchword Anschauung (seeing vividly) or Selbstanschauung (seeing for ourselves). Learning how to see was a vital part in the training of scientific and medical disciplines. In the meantime, the growing market of scientific publishing for the wider public propelled the founding of illustrated periodicals such as the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung. "Understanding and aesthetic appreciation went hand in hand" (35) was not only a romantic tradition promoted by the influential naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) but also a quality that the new popular science genre valued. Haeckel grew up and was educated in such an environment; his lifelong interest in drawing was tightly interwoven with his scientific career. This background, as Hopwood indicates, was vital in shaping Haeckel's later coalescence of Darwinism and art.
