transcendental anatomy

Transcendental anatomy, also known as philosophical anatomy, was a form of comparative anatomy that sought to find ideal patterns and structures common to all organisms in nature. The term originated from naturalist philosophy in the German provinces, and culminated in Britain especially by scholars such as Robert Knox and Richard Owen, who drew from Goethe and Lorenz Oken. From the 1820s to 1859, it persisted as the medical expression of natural philosophy before the Darwinian revolution.