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Lamarck's Science of Living Bodies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

M. J. S. Hodge
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Extract

As a historical figure, Lamarck proves a rather difficult subject. His writings give us few explicit leads to his intellectual debts; nor do they present his theories as the outcome of any sustained course of observations or experimental research; and, what is equally frustrating, it is hard to see how his personal development as a scientific theorist was affected by the dramatic political and social upheavals of the period, in which he took an active and lively interest. And so, with his importance for later writers much clearer than his relationship to those of his own and earlier ages, historians have repeatedly interpreted his works as prophetic of doctrines developed more fully by subsequent generations. No less surprisingly, this facile tactic has provoked a reaction; we have been offered Lamarck as a Stoic, a romantic, harking back to Heraclitus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 323 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1971

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References

1 For Lamarck's life, works and a bibliography of his writings, the standard source remains Landrieu, M., Lamarck: Le Fondateur du Transformisme (Paris, 1909)Google Scholar. The only truly important and extensive study since is in the three authoritative volumes, contributed to the series, Études d'Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, by Daudin, H.: De Linné à Jussieu: Méthodes de la Classification et Id ée de Série en Botanique et en Zoologie (1740–30) (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar and Cuvier et Lamarck: Les Classes Zoologique et l'Idée de Série Animale (1790–1830) (2 vols. Paris, 1926)Google Scholar. My own discussion of Lamarck has benefited from comments made on earlier versions of this paper by Dr. E. Mayr, Dr. T. Levere, Miss M. P. Winsor and Dr. J. Greene. The paper is based on a section of a dissertation, accepted by Harvard University in April 1970: Origins and Species: A Study of the Historical Sources of Darwinism and of the Contexts of Some Other Accounts of Organic Diversity from Plato and Aristotle on. There are two recent discussions of the manuscript writings of Lamarck now in the library of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, but there is as yet no evidence that this material throws any new light on the sources and development of Lamarck's speculations. See the English article: Polyakov, I. M., “The Lamarck Manuscripts”, Russian Biological Review, xlviii (1959), 289–296Google Scholar, and Coleman, W., “Lamarck Manuscripts”, The Mendel News Letter: Archival Resources for the History of Genetics and Allied Sciences (Issued by the Library of the American Philosophical Society), Number 4 (11 1969), 3–4Google Scholar. For a fuller description of manuscripts, see Vachon, M., “A propos de manuscrits de Lamarck conservés a la Bibliothèque Centrale du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris (Note préliminaire)”, Bull. Mus. Nat. d'Hist. Nat., xxxix (1967), 1023–1027Google Scholar, where future publication of manuscripts was promised and Vachon, M., Rousseau, G. and Laissus, Y., “Liste complète des manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque Centrale du Muséum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris”, Bull. Mus. Nat. d'Hist. Nat., xl (1968), 1093–1102Google Scholar. Three items, all from very late in Lamarck's career and containing no sure clues to his earlier intellectual development, have been published in Russian translation in: Polyakov, I. M. and Nuzhdina, N. I. (eds.), J-B. Lamark: Izbrannye Proizvedeniia v Dvukh (2 vols. Moscow, 1955–1959), ii, 573–673Google Scholar. I am grateful to my assistant Mr. M. Siekierski for examining these translated items.

2 For the romantic Lamarck, see Gillispie, C. C., “The Formation of Lamarck's Evolutionary Theory”, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, ix (1956), 323–338Google Scholar, “Lamarck and Darwin in the History of Science”, in Glass, B., Temkin, O., Straus, W. L. (eds.), Forerunners of Darwin: 1745–1859 (Baltimore, 1959), 265–291Google Scholar, and most recently, Chapter vii of Gillispie's book, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, New Jersey, 1960)Google Scholar. Greene has rightly criticized Gillispie's interpretation of Lamarck as plainly at odds with the texts and seriously misleading. See Greene, J. C., The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (New York, 1961), 350Google Scholar. Greene's own discussion of Lamarck deals only with his later writings and stays close to those texts. But, after some sound general remarks on Lamarck's affinities with Buffon, Greene slips into the erroneous orthodoxy: “Thus the mutability of species, a conception toward which Buffon had slowly groped his way, became Lamarck's starting point, the postulate which determined his approach to natural history.” Ibid., 162. Cf. a similar discussion of Buffon and Lamarck, in Wilkie, J. S., “Buffon, Lamarck and Darwin: The Originality of Darwin's Theory of Evolution”, in Bell, P. R. (ed.), Darwin's Biological Work: Some Aspects Reconsidered (Cambridge, 1959), 262–343.Google Scholar

3 The title of a manuscript outline for a book Lamarck never published reads: “Biologie, ou Considérations sur la nature, les facultés, les développemens et l'origine des Corps vivans.” See Grass, P. P.é, “‘La Biologie’ Texte inédite de Lamarck”, Revue Scientifique, v (1944), 267–276Google Scholar. Apparently ignorant of its publication by Grassé, Klein, M. also wrote of this MS.: “Sur l'origine du vocable ‘biologie’”, Archives d'Anatomie, d'Histologie et d'Embryologie, xxxvii (1954), 105–114Google Scholar. Grassé, Klein and Polyakov (in his English article) all discuss the dating of this sketch but agree only that it was written after 1802 and before 1815. It seems clear, however, that Klein is right and that the sketch dates from 1802 or 1803, and is the “Équisse d'une philosophie zoologique”, also referred to by Lamarck as “ma Biologie”, which he told readers of his 1802 lecture they would find printed at the end of that lecture but which was not of course there. See “Discours d'Ouverture de l'An XI”, reprinted by Giard, A., in “J. B. Lamarck, Discours d'Ouverture des Cours de Zoologie, Donnés dans le Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (An VII, An X, An XI et 1806)”, Bulletin Scientifique de la France et de la Belgique, xl (1906), 539Google Scholar. All subsequent references to these four lectures are to this handy edition of them.

4 Recherches sur les Causes des Principaux Faits Physiques (2 vols., Paris, 1794), ii, 213Google Scholar. These Recherches were written in 1776; see the “Avertissement” prefacing the work.

5 The significance of the phrase, “production de la nature” will become evident shortly. Although Lamarck occasionally uses it of animals and plants in his writings of the 1780s and 1790s, from 1800 on its frequency rises dramatically when in his lecture of that year he announces his new views. See “Discours d'Ouverture, Prononcé le 21 Floréal An 8”, loc. cit., 443–595Google Scholar. The 1800 lecture was first published by Lamarck, as an introduction to his Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres (Paris, 1801), 1–48Google Scholar. Lamarck complained that although many adopt it to refer to animals and plants, writers attach “no positive idea” to the general term “productions of nature”. Philosophie Zoologique (2 vols., Paris, 1830), i, 90Google Scholar. There was only ever one edition of the Philosophie; this so-called “nouvelle edition” is only a re-issue of the sheets of the 1809 printing, as was pointed out by Smith, S., “The Origin of ‘The Origin’”, The Advancement of Science, lxiv (03 1960), 393–403.Google Scholar

6 Another favourite phrase. See especially Philosophie Zoologique, i, 66.Google Scholar

7 Sceptics will remember that scientists' later recollections of the steps leading up to their major insights have often proved inaccurate when checked against the letters and notebooks written at the time. But, by itself, that fact is no reason for discounting any autobiographical sources in a case like Lamarck's where there is as yet no such check available. Sceptics may also suggest that Lamarck only cast his book's preface in autobiographical form for rhetorical effect. But there is no shred of confirming evidence for this suggestion, and Lamarck's well-known honesty to weigh against it. Furthermore, even granted the force of the sceptics two warnings, the historian would still be mistaken who did not pay close attention to what Lamarck thought it proper to give as a public reconstruction of the steps which had led him to his new views.

8 These and the quotations in the next dozen paragraphs are all from the “Avertissement” prefacing the Philosophie. The translation of Hugh Elliot—always free and often anachronistic— contains a misleading ‘howler’ on its first page where Lamarck's “en procédant du plus simple vers le plus composé” is rendered “from the simplest worm upwards”. See Lamarck, J. B., Zoological Philosophy, trans. Elliot, H. (London, 1914), 1–2Google Scholar. Belief in inherited effects of habits had, of course, been prevalent since antiquity. See Zirkle, C., “The Early History of the Ideas of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, xxxv (1946), 91–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Cf. Lamarck's earlier enthusiastic comments concerning these subtle fluids: “to renounce research which can lead to knowledge of these subtle matters is to refuse to seize the only thread which nature offers to lead us to the truth”. Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivans (Paris [1802]), 159–160.Google Scholar

10 “Discours d'Ouverture de 1806”, 558.Google Scholar

11 Recherches (1802), 141–142Google Scholar. This passage is among the pages reprinted by Giard, , loc. cit., 517–521.Google Scholar

12 Hydrogéologie (Paris, 1802), 52 ffGoogle Scholar. The original pagination of the book is given in Lamarck, J. B., Hydrogeology, trans. Carozzi, Albert V. (Urbana, Illinois, 1964)Google Scholar. The most systematic presentation of his geological and climatic theories was given by Lamarck, in: “Considérations sur quelques faits applicables à la théorie du globe, observés par M. Peron dans son voyage aux terres australes, et sur quelques questions géologiques qui naissent de la connaissance de ces faits”, Annales du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, vi (1805), 26–52.Google Scholar

13 For this conclusion of the two astronomers, see Grant, R., History of Physical Astronomy (London, 1852), 52–56.Google Scholar

14 See the entry, “Points polaires”, in Lamarck's analytical index to the Hydrogéologie. Cf. his paper of 1805, cited in note 12. Werner's attempt to find the origin of mineral strata in a primeval ocean was, of course, a quite different project, based on assumptions about mineral compounds that Lamarck's chemical theories ruled out altogether.

15 Hydrogéologie and 1805 paper, passim. For a comprehensive survey of opinions on “lost species” from Ray to Cuvier, see Greene, J., Death of Adam, 96–133Google Scholar. Lamarck's place in speculations on the age of the habitable earth is discussed by Haber, F. C. in his study “Fossils and the Idea of a Process of Time in Natural History”, in Forerunners of Darwin, 222–262Google Scholar, and in The Age of the World: Moses to Darwin (Baltimore, 1962).Google Scholar

16 Lamarck read a memoir, “Sur les fossiles”, to the Institut National in 1799. It was presumably this memoir which he published, in 1801, as an appendix to the Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres, 403–411Google Scholar. See Landrieu, , Lamarck, 186.Google Scholar

17 “Discours” of 1802, 515–516.Google Scholar

18 Philosophie Zoologique, i, 104.Google Scholar

19 Philosophie Zoologique, i, 14Google Scholar. Lyell's long exposition of Lamarck's views is in his Principles of Geology (5th edn., 4 vols., London, 1837), ii, 360–421Google Scholar. Lyell's interpretation of Lamarck is mistaken in three fundamental respects. He takes Lamarck to be proposing primarily a theory of the origin of species, he presents it as a theory of common ancestry and as an attempt to explain the fossil record. This allowed Lyell to separate the question of common ancestry from Lamarck's discussions of spontaneous generation and the alleged invariable progress from more simple organisms to those above them in the scale of perfection. This radical misrepresentation of Lamarck's position (which was followed by Whewell too) was of the greatest importance for the development of Darwin's and Wallace's thinking on the origin of species. Lyell's version of Lamarck influenced them as Lamarck's own writings could never have done. I have discussed this point at length in the dissertation cited in the first footnote. For Whewell on Lamarck, see his History of the Inductive Sciences (3rd edn., with additions. 2 vols., New York, 1890), ii, 561 ffGoogle Scholar. Whewell's section on Lamarck first appeared in the original edition of 1837 and was familiar to both Darwin and Wallace.

20 Recherches (1794), ii, 26–27.Google Scholar

21 See Lamarck's own summary of his chemistry, in Recherches (1794), ii, 290–400Google Scholar. On affinities, see Recherches (1794), ii 387Google Scholar; Memoires 7–20Google Scholar, and Philosophie Zoologique, ii, 95Google Scholar. Lamarck talks of “tissu cellulaire” as do several of his contemporaries, but the phrase indicates nothing approaching the cell theory of the eighteen-thirties. See Hughes, A., A History of Cytology (London and New York, 1959), 33–34Google Scholar; and HallT, S. T, S., Ideas of Life and Matter, Studies in the History of General Physiology, 600 B.C.-1900 A.D. (2 vols., Chicago and London, 1969), ii, 139Google Scholar. Hall gives a useful discussion of Lamarck's physiological views. Lamarck's distinction between contained and containing parts goes back to antiquity; see Harvey, William, The Anatomical Lectures, ed. and trans, by Whitteridge, G. (Edinburgh and London, 1964), 8Google Scholar. See further, Schiller, J., “Physiologie et classification dans l'oeuvre de Lamarck”, Histoire et Biologie, ii (1969), 35–57.Google Scholar

22 Recherches (1794), ii, 188.Google Scholar

23 Recherches (1794), ii, 398–399.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 185–215.

25 Ibid., 214. Lamarck was, as taxonomists say, a “lumper” rather than a “splitter”. Thus when he says, here: “If there exist any varieties produced by the action of circumstances, these varieties do not change the nature of the species; but doubtless one often errs in indicating as a species what is only a variety; and I perceive that this error may be of consequence in reasoning upon this subject”, he means that, in alleged cases of changes in specific characters, altered conditions are really only causing new varieties. For the several earlier statements of Lamarck, from 1778 to 1793, asserting the fixity of species, see Landrieu, , op. cit. (1), 290Google Scholar. Note also that in 1794 Lamarck rejected a reported “transformation, du lichen pyxidatus en lichen digitalus”; Voyages du Professeur Pallas dans Plusieurs Provinces de l'Empire de Russie et dans l'Asie Septentrionale, traduits de l'Allemand par C. Gaultier de la Peyronnerie. Nouvelle edition, revue et enrichie de notes per Lamarck, Langlès et Billecoq (8 vols., Paris, 1794), ii, 459.Google Scholar

26 For a definitive history of these and related issues, see the masterly work by Roger, J., Les Sciences de la Vie dans la Pensée Française du XVIIIe Siécle: La Génération des Animaux de Descartes à l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar. Although this magnificent study stops short of Lamarck it provides the indispensable background for any analysis of his writings. My discussion of Buffon and hence of Lamarck is greatly indebted to Roger's insights and scholarship. For a full commentary on the term producito and its cognates in modern languages, see Adelmann, H. B., Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (5 vols., Ithaca, New York, 1966), ii, 934–935.Google Scholar

27 Cheyne, George, Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed (4th edn., corrected. London, 1734), 131Google Scholar; Watts, Isaac. Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects (6th edn. corrected. London, 1763), 209–210Google Scholar. The first edition appeared in 1733 and gives an excellent summary of the various positions then current, regarding the production of animals and plants.

28 For Lamarck's explicit rejections of pre-existent germs, see his Mémoires de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, 1797), 272Google Scholar, and Système Analytique des Connaissances Positives de L'Homme (Paris, 1820), 123Google Scholar. For Cuvier's cautious endorsement of pre-existing germs, see the passages quoted in Coleman, W., Georges Cuvier, Zpologist: A Study in the History of Evolution Theory (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964), 163–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière (44 vols., Paris, 1749–1804), ii, 18–53.Google Scholar

30 Mémoires, 272–274Google Scholar. As additional evidence that, in 1797, Lamarck still has not reached the central convictions of his later biology, see his rejection, once again, of the possibility that mineral compounds can be produced “by nature” and his reassertion of the “contrary” thesis that they are all produced by “living beings”; Mémoires, 319–320.Google Scholar

31 Recherches (1802), 92 ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Philosophie Zoologique, ii, 82.Google Scholar

32 For a more extensive account of Lamarck's taxonomic writings and their relation to those of other naturalists, see Daudin's exemplary studies, cited in the first note to this paper.

33 See the “Discours Préliminaire” which appeared unchanged in all three editions (1778, 1795) 1805 of Lamarck's Flore Françoise. As cited here, the “Discours” is in Flore Françoise (2nd edn., 3 vols., Paris, 1795), i, i–cxixGoogle Scholar. See also, for Lamarck's early statements of his taxonomic views, various general articles—especially, “Analyse”, “Botanique”, “Caractères”, “Classes”, “Espèce”, “Familles”, “Genres”—published in the first three volumes (1783, 1786 and 1789 respectively) of the Encyclopédie Méthodique: Botanique. Dictionnaire de Botanique (13 vols. Paris, 1783–1817)Google Scholar; the preface and introduction to his Tableau Encyclop édique et Méthodique Des Trois Règnes De La Nature: Botanique. Illustration des Genres (2 vols., Paris, 1791–1793)Google Scholar; and the many articles (listed in Landrieu's bibliography) contributed by Lamarck, to the Journal d'Histoire Naturelle (2 vols., Paris, 1791–1792).Google Scholar

34 Flore Françoise (1795), i, xciii.Google Scholar

35 “Mémoire sur les classes lesplus convenables à établir parmi des végétaux, et sur l'analogie de leur nombre avec celles determinées dans le règne animal, ayant égard de part et d'autre à la perfection graduée des organes”, Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences, 1785, 437–453Google Scholar. This memoir was largely reprinted as the article “Classes” (1786) cited in note 33.

36 Philosophie Zoologique, ii, 451–466.Google Scholar

37 Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres (7 vols., Paris, 1815–1822), i, 451–462.Google Scholar

38 Recherches (1802), 71–83.Google Scholar

39 These epistemological apologetics get their fullest statement in the Histoire Naturellee, i, 334–341Google Scholar, and in the Système Analytique. See also the manuscript sketch, “Aperçu Analytique des Connaissance Humaines”, published, with an English translation, in Wheeler, W. M. and Barbour, T.. The Lamarck Manuscripts at Harvard (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 75–83 and 175–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 See Buffon, 's “De la Nature. Seconde Vue”, of 1765, in the Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière (44 vols., Paris, 1749–1804), xiii, i–xxGoogle Scholar. For an account of Buffon's place in the history of Newtonian approaches to chemical theory, see Thackray, A., Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 155–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 For these features of German romantic idealism, see Gode-von Aesch, A. G. F., Natural Science in German Romanticism (New York, 1941), passim.Google Scholar

42 Histoire Naturelle, i, 304–341Google Scholar; ibid., 12–13.

43 Ibid., i, 307–322. Cf. Recherches (1794), i, 19–27Google Scholar and parallel passages in the Recherches (1802)Google Scholar, Philosophie Zoologique and Système Analytique.

44 Histoire Naturelle, i, 323–334.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 44–45, and 168–169.

46 The literature on Newton's influence grows apace. In what follows I have drawn especially from Schofield, R. E., Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in An Age of Reason (Princeton, New Jersey, 1970)Google Scholar and conversations with Dr. Schofield and Dr. J. L. Heilbron. An anonymous reviewer of Schofield's book recently provided an excellent orientation in this difficult area. See “Cartesians and Newtonians”, Times Literary Supplement, No. 3, 576 (11 09 1970), 1000Google Scholar. For an incisive survey of different Newtonian physiological theories in the eighteenth century, see Hall, T. S., “On Biological Analogs of Newtonian Paradigms”, Philosophy of Science, xxxv, No. 1 (03 1968), 6–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the relevant sections of Hall's valuable book cited in note 21.

47 For Newton's changing views, published and unpublished, on active principles, see McGuire, J. E., “Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible Realm”, Ambix, xv (1968), 154–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 “Mémoire sur la Matière du Son”, Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d'Histoire Naturelle. xlix (1799), 397–412.Google Scholar

49 For loyalty to attractive and repulsive forces as defining one kind of Newtonian natural philosophy in the late eighteenth century, see McCormmach, R., “Henry Cavendish: A Study of Rational Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy”, Isis, lx (1969), 293–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In introducing his “Biologie”, Lamarck offered an explicit analogy between the great synthesis Newton's law of gravitation made possible in astronomy, and the long search for a single law behind all organic diversity and developments which had guided his own researches in physics and natural history. See “La Biologie”, 270 (f.n. 3).Google Scholar