Oken, LORENZ

1779-1851. Prof. Jena 1807-19, Munich 1828, and Zurich 1832. His Physio - philosophie, 1802, placed him at the head of German nature-philosophers. He completed the extension of Kant's theories to nature, begun by Fichte and Schelling. The central idea is, that the whole is in each of its parts; e.g., the head is a repetition of the trunk. He anticipated the cell theory of Schwann, and the modern views on light, heat, and conservation of energy. The entire universe he looked on as an organism, represented in man as a microcosm, the lower animals being specific evolutions of the different organs in man. He advocated the idea of the skull being composed of vertebræ, 13 years before Goethe published the same theory. He established the periodical Isis, 1816, and founded itinerant scientific societies.