Toward a Nonanthropocentric Vision of Nature: Goethe’s Discovery of the Intermaxillary Bone

Summary

ON MARCH 27, 1784, Goethe writes to Johann Gottfried Herder,

Ich habe gefunden—weder Gold noch Silber, aber was mir eine unsägliche Freude macht—

das os intermaxillare am Menschen!

Ich verglich mit Lodern Menschen- und Tierschädel, kam auf die Spur und siehe da ist es. Nur bitt’ ich Dich, laß Dich nichts merken, denn es muß geheim behandelt werden. (WA 4.6:258)

[I have found—neither gold nor silver, but what makes me unspeakably happy—

the os intermaxillare in the human!

With Loder I compared human and animal skulls, came upon its trace, and look, there it is. Only, I beg of you not to mention it, since it must be handled confidentially.]

The bone whose discovery so elated Goethe, then called the “intermaxillary bone” but now the “premaxilla,” is a pair of cranial bones that are located at the front of the upper jaw and bear the incisors in animals that have these teeth. Goethe expresses happiness in finding this bone specifically in humans, a discovery that opposed the prevailing anatomical opinion at the time. In his essay that was finished by the end of October 1784 and later given the title “Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist ein Zwischenknochen der obern Kinnlade zuzuschreiben” (An Intermaxillary Bone of the Maxilla Is to Be Ascribed to the Human as well as to Animals), Goethe claims, citing the work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Petrus Camper, that the bone has recently garnered attention as a “distinguishing mark” between humans and apes (LA 1.9:154). Yet, upon reexamination of these anatomists’ works, I argue that Goethe misrepresents their positions and overstates the significance of his discovery, at least in a certain sense: while Camper and Blumenbach do deny the intermaxillary bone to humans, they do not construe its absence as an important distinguishing mark between humans and animals. Not only did Goethe's discovery not have the significance he attributed to it, but also historians of science claim that he did not discover anything at all: the intermaxillary bone had already been described in the human by several anatomists before him. It would thus seem that Goethe misinterpreted the significance of what he had not found, and that his unspeakable happiness was unwarranted.