HALLER, [VICTOR] ALBRECHT VON

(b. Bern, Switzerland, 16 October 1708; d. Bern, 12 December 1777),

anatomy, physiology, botany, bibliography.

For the original article on Haller see DSB, vol. 6.

In 1970, Haller’s scientific achievements and activity had only been studied perfunctorily. After that a lot was learned about his thoughts, concepts, and the spread of his ideas. Scholars have analyzed the unity of his thought, science, and religion; explored his ideals of science and research; investigated his experimental approach; examined the principles and spread of his theory of irritability and sensibility; reassessed his changing views on embryology; registered his vast correspondence; and studied his communication within the Republic of Letters.

Richard Toellner made the first—and as of 2007 the only—modern attempt to grasp the general frame of Haller’s thought. He argued that the Christian dualism of creator and creation, the Cartesian dualism of matter and soul, and the Newtonian dualism of force and matter enabled Haller to separate the areas which could be studied (creation, matter) from those which could not (creator, soul, essence of forces). These separations did not, however, tear up his world. It was God who guaranteed its

hunity althoug it was unknown to mankind how the areas were connected. It is in this sense that one has to understand Haller’s famous lines: “Into inner nature no created mind penetrates, He is very fortunate when nature shows its outer shell” (Die Falschheit menschlicher Tugenden, 1730). It was God who had arranged the structures, laws, and functions in nature, and it was man, or more precisely, the scientist who could try to discover them. However, this was only the outward appearance of nature; the inner nature, the ultimate laws, structures and purposes were known onlyto God.

Physiology and Methodology . Haller’s single contributions to physiology have to be seen as parts of a broader research program already envisaged in the early 1740s: the establishment of a new physiology, based on an experimental foundation. He pursued this project both on the institutional and the methodological level. Haller envisaged the university not only as a place of teaching but also of research. It was the place most suited to contribute to the advancement of science on a steady and long-term basis, not least through the work of the students. Haller’s doctoral candidates had to perform experimental studies for their dissertations and were thus important contributors to his research program. Extremely ambitious himself, Haller asked for public reward of scientific achievements as he considered the drive for recognition and fame to be one of the main driving forces behind research.

Research itself—and this is a central element of Haller’s methodology—had to focus on a small and well-defined area. It was the continuous performance of specialized research rather than the great theories that added to the advancement of science. The single larger or smaller results, though, should not remain isolated but in their totality would help to construct and extend the single branches of science. In this ongoing process the use of hypotheses linking the various fragments of knowledge was allowed as long as the hypotheses were clearly marked as such. Hypotheses, Haller said, led to novelties and truth, and no discoverer, not even Newton, could do without them. Most importantly, they posed questions which would not have occurred to us and which called for experimental testing.

It is the vast collection of facts and results combined with a cautious use of hypotheses that is characteristic for Haller’s works, and notably his opus magnum, the Elementa physiologiae. Animal experiments were carried out by many scientists in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but Haller was the first to perform them in their hundreds, in a systematic manner in order to answer to a well-defined set of questions and considered part of a far-reaching program seeking to establish the basis of a new science. He intended to explore all areas of physiology but did so only in selected subjects. This was partly due to his early leave from the university. His main contribution based on experimental testing was his highly influential, but controversial, concept of irritability and sensibility that stimulated supporters and opponents to perform animal experiments all over Europe, on a scale never seen before.

The results, however, were contradictory, due to contrasting ideological presumptions and due to the lack of standards of procedure. This fostered the perception of animal experimentation as an uncertain method which did not respect the complexity of physiological processes. There was no agreement upon the procedural aspects and heuristic value of this research technique. Animal experiments were performed by several distinguished researchers but not on an institutional basis. Only in the 1820s, when standards of procedure were established, did animal experimentation slowly gain acceptance as a central method in physiological research.

The rejection of Haller’s particular findings—which has long been underestimated by historians—allowed for the rejection of his whole concept. Although Haller’s description of an innate bodily faculty had a great impact on the evolution of physiological thought and fostered the development of vitalist theories, only a few adopted his definition of the two qualities. The majority regarded irritability as a purely mechanical phenomenon or as a vital faculty extended beyond the muscular fibers and conceived sensibility as an unconscious activity on a local or central nervous level. As a result, most authors did not accept Haller’s view of the muscular and the nervous system as entirely independent territories.

Haller’s much discussed conversion from epigenesis to preformism has often been regarded as a result of his religious orthodoxy favoring the idea of a fully preformed embryo. Maria Teresa Monti, however, has shown convincingly that although ideological assumptions played a role it was the totality of his many observations which urged him to convert to preformism. Only an explanation based on thorough experimental testing was compatible with his physico-theological belief. What humans saw, Haller thought, could never be against religion. As the visible phenomena could not be denied, it was not science but religion which was endangered by such a confrontation: “Wanting to oppose religion to visible truths is the most dangerous thing one can undertake against it” (Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 1760, p. 1356).

Haller’s extensive scientific and literary activity (twenty-four monographs in seventy-five volumes, four hundred shorter works, nine-thousand book reviews), his unpublished papers (one-hundred sixty volumes), his well documented library (twenty-three thousand titles) and his large correspondence (seventeen-thousand surviving letters) make him a case exceptionally well-suited to examine how science and the Republic of Letters in the eighteenth century worked. As of 2007, only his correspondence has been studied in some detail. It shows clearly that science and scientific organization was not only dependent on communication by letter but that it was also driven and shaped by it.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY HALLER

The Correspondence between Albrecht von Haller and Charles Bonnet. Edited by Otto Sonntag. Bern, Switzerland: Huber, 1983.

The Correspondence between Albrecht von Haller and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. Edited by Otto Sonntag. Bern, Switzerland: Huber, 1990.

John Pringle’s Correspondence with Albrecht von Haller. Edited by Otto Sonntag. Basel: Schwabe, 1999.

Commentarius de formatione cordis in ovo incubato. Edited by Maria Teresa Monti. Basel: Schwabe, 2000. Critical edition, the lengthy introduction (in Italian and English) delivers a thorough analysis of Haller’s embryology.

Repertorium zu Albrecht von Hallers Korrespondenz 1724–1777. Edited by Urs Boschung et al. 2 vols. Basel: Schwabe, 2002. Catalogue of 17,000 letters, including summaries of Haller’s 1,200 correspondences.

Bibliographia Halleriana. Verzeichnis der Schriften von und über Albrecht von Haller. Edited by Hubert Steinke and Claudia Profos. Basel: Schwabe, 2004. Complete bibliography of primary and secondary literature arranged according to subjects.

OTHER SOURCES

Cherni, Amor. Epistémologie de la transparence. Sur l’embryologie de A. von Haller. Paris: Vrin, 1998. Based on a limited knowledge of Haller’s writings, to be used with caution.

Duchesneau, François. La physiologie des lumières. Empirisme, modèles, théories. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. Thorough epistemological analysis of Haller’s physiology and embryology on pp. 126–234, 277–311.

Mazzolini, Renato. “Sugli studi embriologici di Albrecht von Haller negli anni 1755–1758.” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento(1977): 183–242.

Monti, Maria Teresa, ed. Catalogo del Fondo Haller della Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense di Milano, 13 vols. Milan, 1983–1994. Catalogue of Haller’s massive library (now in Milan) with 13,000 monographs and 10,000 dissertations.

———. Congettura ed esperienza nella fisiologia di Haller: la riforma dell‘anatomia animata e il sistema della generazione. Florence: Olschki, 1990.

Roe, Shirley A. Matter, Life and Generation. Eighteenth-Century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

———. “Anatomia Animata: the Newtonian Physiology of Albrecht von Haller.” In Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, edited by Everett Mendelsohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Sonntag, Otto. “Albrecht von Haller on the Future of Science.” Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974): 313–322.

———. “The Motivations of the Scientist: The Self-Image of Albrecht von Haller.” Isis 65 (1974): 336–351.

Steinke, Hubert. Irritating Experiments: Haller’s Concept and the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility 1750–1790. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.

Stuber, Martin et al., eds. Hallers Netz. Ein europäischer Gelehrtenbriefwechsel zur Zeit der Aufklärung. Basel: Schwabe, 2005. Analysis of Haller’s correpondence, focusing on communication in the Republic of Letters.

Toellner, Richard. Albrecht von Haller. Über die Einheit im Denken des letzten Universalgelehrten. Wiesbaden, Germany: Steiner, 1971.

Hubert Steinke