Top 6 Quotes & Sayings by Lorenz Oken

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German naturalist Lorenz Oken.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

Lorenz Oken was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss in Bohlsbach, Ortenau, Baden, and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Würzburg. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent, and shortened his name to Oken. As Lorenz Oken, he published a small work entitled Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, der Theorie der Sinne, mit der darauf gegründeten Classification der Thiere (1802). This was the first of a series of works which established him as a leader of the movement of "Naturphilosophie" in Germany.

German - Naturalist | August 1, 1779 - August 11, 1851

Source: Wikipedia

Physio-philosophy has to show how, and in accordance indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin; and, therefore, how something derived its existence from nothing. It has to portray the first periods of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in Man attained self-consciousness.

Lorenz Oken

Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development, and must comprehend everything that has preceded him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must represent the whole world in miniature.

Lorenz Oken