Historical research
AIf we want to determine how the transformations of the body architecture of animals have developed over the course of evolution, we enter the field of historical science. Here applies here: a process of the past cannot simply be read from today’s things and conditions, but must be reconstructed from today’s knowledge and this reconstruction can then be told as a process, as a story. Today’s subject is thus both the starting point and the end point of the scientific approach. This duality of approach is typical of all historical research.
In fact, the real existing fossil and modern animals are the starting point of our study. We use them to examine how the body of animals in general or a specific type of construction is built and how it functions. We use them to recognize principles of construction and function.
With a uniform membrane, such a body assumes the form of a sphere because of internal liquid pressure. Any other form must be generated against the spherical shape with fibers and with rigid parts. This applies for technical devices just as it does for organisms. Whatever materials the covering and the filling consist of, the cells of the organisms, the fire brigade hose with its liquid fillings, the rice and sugar sacks with their granulate fillings, and the bicycle tube and soap bubbles with their air fillings all constitute the same structural type: the architect Frei Otto called it the “pneu.” Only on this level it is possible to argue about the change of the various animal body designs.
Historical research – the animal kingdom
IThe evolution of organisms is the transformation of body construction types, and it is therefore necessary to argue about their building materials and their material properties and the construction principles they determine. As already explained in the first part of the Frankfurt theory, all organisms are hydrostatic soft bodies that can secondarily incorporate solid components made of organic or mineral substance.
The specific building materials of animals are cells and connective tissue, namely collagen fibers (elastic or with tensile strength), which lie in the more or less viscous (“gelatinous”) extracellular matrix (ECM). Cells and connective tissue are specialized for many different tasks in the body and take on different forms accordingly.
In mechanical terms, cells and cell structures are fluid bodies with a flexible envelope. – In the simplest case, this is the cell membrane. Such a body with a uniform membrane takes the shape of a sphere. Any other shape must be produced by fibers and rigid components against the spherical shape.
Only at this level can one argue about the gradual transformation of the construction types of animals.
Reconstruction – the terminology
This reasoning gives the parts of thebody, for which there are fixed zoological-anatomical names, an explicitly technical assignment. This is illustrated by a specific case:
We describe the earthworm as a hydrostatic body with right/left symmetrical serial fluid spaces (the coelom) and transverse walls that act as tensions, longitudinal, oblique and ring fibers that are tensile (collagen fibers) and those that are contractile (muscles), with a continuous canal (gut), an outer layer of crossed collagen fibers (cuticle), — and we include as many details as we feel necessary.
We then only talk and argue about this body construction and its functioning, i.e. its mode of operation within itself and in relation to the surrounding world, its ecological relation and finally we talk about its possibilities to gradually change.
In order to determine the basic lines of the animal kingdom, we reconstructed the primitive animal as the simplest possible body from the two components of cells and gelatinous collagen fibers. We then reconstructed the way in which the various structural types could have developed. The animals of a distant past can only be represented as construction types from which the fossil or living animal construction types known to us today emerged.
Theory and graphical representation
In terms of the philosophy of science, these reconstructions are models for evolutionary processes. Only they can be created, discussed and, if necessary, falsified by proving an error.
In contrast, the description and comparison of real existing modern or fossil animals – and the resulting discussion about them – remain stuck at the level of naturalism. They cannot reach the level of the causality of transformations.
The results of this working method, which have been published in numerous papers, are summarized in the graphic of our poster (edition German 2018, English 2021). For this reason, only construction drawings for the development lines are in the center. Along the edge are real animals whose body construction we have studied and taken as the basis for our reconstruction; the real animals, in turn, are the result of the reconstructed evolutionary processes.