OWEN, RICHARD (b. Lancaster, England, 20 July 1804; d. Richmond Park, London, England, 18 December 1892), comparative anatomy, vertebrate paleontology, geology.

    investigated the matter to his own satisfaction, and incorporated his opposing findings in his teaching without publishing them. When Owen repeated his views in a discussion following another's paper at the 1860 meeting of the British Association in Oxford, Huxley was prepared to contradict Owen directly and publicly, stating that he would give evidence to support his contradiction in a more appropriate place. This Huxley did, with the assistance of others, particularly Flower, in a series of publications from 1860 to 1863. Owen simply failed to see certain anatomical structures and relationships. He appears to have operated on the assumption that man possessed unique mental capabilities and that any such unique capabilities must be based in some unique anatomical structure or structures; therefore man could be distinguished from the anthropoid apes by just such structures. Not to be ignored is the fact that many considered Owen to be the preeminent anatomist of his time, and he had held two prominent positions in the British scientific community. In contrast, Darwin had not held any similar position and had already retired, seemingly, to the country; and Huxley, who had backed the argumentative Owen into a corner, was a relative youngster in 1860. These personal factors must have played a role in this whole controversy.

Owen's comparative-anatomical and paleontological work is in the best Cuvierian tradition and perhaps comparable only to that of Cuvier. At the same time Owen was guided by a strong affinity to that school of thought which strongly repelled Cuvier--German Naturphilosophie. This affinity is amply evidenced by Owen's further development of the idea of a vertebral archetype, promulgated by Goethe and Carus, in his On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (1848), his Anatomy of Fishes (1846), and On the Nature of Limbs (1849). It was hardly coincidence that Owen was instrumental in having Oken's Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie translated and published in London in 1847. Also, Owen wrote the article “Oken” for the eighth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Through his elaboration of his theory of archetypes, Owen provided a major assist to the much-needed standardization of anatomical nomenclature and greatly clarified the distinction between the anatomical concepts of homology and analogy. In addition, from the Naturphilosophen Owen acquired the notion of a specific character resulting from the interaction of two opposing forces working within the developing embryo. His view that one species might develop from another by “an innate tendency to deviate from the parental type” meshes well with the developmental forces he saw operative in each individual.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS.

There are more than 600 titles in Owen's bibliography. The greatest bulk of his papers are in the collections of the British Museum (Natural History). These include correspondence, notebooks, drafts of papers, and interleaved copies of most of his own books. The Royal College of Surgeons has a smaller but important collection of Owen's papers, mostly dating from the period when he was there. In addition, letters by Owen are to be found in the papers of his many correspondents.

The most important of Owen's separate publications include Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus Pompilius, Linn.) (London, 1832); Descriptive and Illustrative Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, 5 vols. (London, 1833-1840); Fossil Mammalia, pt. 1 of The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S “Beagle” (London, 1840); Odontography; or a Treatise on the Comparative Anatomy of the Teeth; Their Physiological Relations, Mode of Development, and Microscopic Structure in the Vertebrate Animals (London, 1840-1845); On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (London, 1848); On the Classification and Geographical Distribution of the Mammalia, Being the Lecture on Sir Robert Rede's Foundation (London, 1859); Palaeontology, or a Systematic Summary of Extinct Animals and Their Geological Relations (Edinburgh, 1860; 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1861); and On the Anatomy and Physiology of Vertebrates, 3 vols. (London, 1866-1868). The Life of Sir Richard Owen, cited below, contains an exhaustive chronological bibliography of about 650 items; this is the most complete listing of his works.

II. SECONDARY LITERATURE.

The most important source for Owen's life and work is by his grandson, Rev. Richard Owen, The Life of Sir Richard Owen (London, 1894), which contains an essay by Thomas Henry Huxley, “Owen's Position in the History of Anatomical Science,” II, 273-332, and the bibliography cited above, II, 333-382. See also William Henry Flower, “Richard Owen,” in Dictionary of National Biography, XIV (1894-1895), 1329-1338.

WESLEY C. WILLIAMS