Form and Law ‐ Rupert Riedl's Significance for Morphology

Rupert Riedl showed in his "Order in Living Organisms" that morphology can produce law statements and is, therefore, a proper, that is, nomothetic, science. Furthermore, he coined useful terms (interphene and metaphene) and concepts (burden, cadre and minimal homology). Notwithstanding certain flaws-he used "laws in evolution" and "verification of a theory" although claiming to be in accordance with Popper's hypothetico-deductivism-and an almost complete absence of synecological relationships in his evolutionary explanations, his scientific legacy still forms a basis of a "logic of morphology" and an "evolutionary morphology," especially through the works of his students.