Science Meets Whimsy

Talk about the find of the day. I stumbled across these illustrations by biologist, philosopher and artist Ernst Haeckel, and immediately fell in love with his work. While I have the utmost respect for scientific drawings, I have always found them to be a bit stark, detatched and lacking in personal expression. Which is, of course, the purpose of them: to portray something as a biological record, not a personal interpretation. It has always struck me as a bit of a paradox really. Yet there is something different about the illustrations of Ernst Haeckel. They seem to have an emotional quality to them, while still remaining faithful to true scientific form. It's as if Scientific illustration merged with Art Nouveau into some glorious new fusion.

To view more information on Ernst Haeckel, who was quite an interesting man, click here.
You may also purchase a book of his illustrations on Amazon, titled Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel