Abstract

At the beginning of the 9th century, anatomists aimed at detaching themselves from a mere classifying and descriptive approach to establish a philosophic science studying form patterns and relationships. Organic forms were part of a research program, grounded on how their components were related from a structuralist perspective, as it is for Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, founders of teratology. The monster was a subject freed from superstition and subjected to the gaze of the philosopher of nature who, in analyzing it, found the same laws that nature employed in shaping any normal individual.