Lamarck
COMMON NAME: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
FULL NAME: Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de
ACHIEVEMENTS: A pre-Darwinian theory of evolution. Coined the term 'biology'
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE OF BIRTH: 1 August 1744
PLACE OF BIRTH: Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardy, France
DATE OF DEATH: 28 December 1829
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France. Age 85
DISCIPLINE: Natural science
FIELD: Botany, invertebrate zoology, paleontology.
LANGUAGE/S: French
PARENTS: Father, Philippe Jacques de Monet de La Marck; mother, Marie-Francoise de Fontaines de Chuignolles
SPOUSE: First, Marie Rosalie Delaporte; second, Charlotte Victoire Reverdy; third, Julie Mallet; fourth marriage unconfirmed
SIBLINGS: Ten older siblings
CHILDREN: Eight
EDUCATION: Jesuit school, Amiens, 1755-1759; medical studies, Paris, ca. 1770.
MAJOR WORK/S: 'Philosophie zoologique' ('Zoological Philosophy'), 1809.
LIFE AND TIMES:
In 1759 Lamarck joined the French army and fought in the Seven Years' War. During his military service Lamarck was posted throughout southern and eastern France and developed a keen interest in botany. Upon leaving the military in 1768 Lamarck settled in Paris, where he initially worked in a bank and studied medicine.
He also attended lectures at the Jardin du Roi, the royal botanical garden under the leadership of <mentor was> Buffon*. Lamarck evidently made a favorable impression on the respected naturalist, and with Buffon's patronage he quickly rose to prominence in the French scientific community.
In 1779 Buffon arranged for the publication of Lamarck's first botanical study, 'Flore francoise' ('French Flora'), with a preface written by <colleague was> Daubenton*. Buffon was instrumental in Lamarck's election to the Academie des Sciences (Academy of Sciences) in 1779 and later granted him a position at the Jardin du Roi. Lamarck also served as traveling companion and tutor for Buffon's son in 1781-1782.
Although his illustrious mentor died in 1788, Lamarck had by then secured his own scientific reputation. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, in 1793 the Jardin du Roi was reorganized as the National Museum of Natural History, with twelve newly created professorships of equal status. Lamarck was appointed professor of 'insects and worms' (i.e., invertebrates), a position he would hold for the rest of his life. His colleagues at the Museum included Daubenton, professor of mineralogy, <colleague was> Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire*, professor of vertebrates; and <colleague was> Cuvier*, professor of anatomy.
Lamarck's approach to science was distinctly Buffonian in character, with the ambitious goal of comprehending the history and progressive development of the natural world. Buffon and his fellow 'philosopher-naturalists' invoked sweeping hypotheses to explain the diversity of nature in terms of ordinary processes operating for indefinitely long periods of time. In their view, the complicated classification schemes and nomenclature employed by others obscured the simplicity of nature's plan. In 'Flore francoise', for instance, Lamarck rejected the taxonomy developed by <rejected system of> Linnaeus* in favor of a simpler, naturalistic classification of plants.
In the twenty years following his initial success in botany, Lamarck applied the same far-reaching, speculative approach to a variety of fields including chemistry, meteorology, and geology. These studies, however, were merely a prelude to his research on invertebrates and his unique but poorly received theory of evolution. Lamarck apparently converted to evolutionism rather suddenly in 1799 or 1800, partly in response to research by Cuvier on fossil elephants and sloths.
Cuvier demonstrated in 1796 that these fossil vertebrates were distinct from their living counterparts -- a breathtaking challenge to the traditional Aristotelian conception of perfection in nature. Lamarck soon reached a similar conclusion in his own work with invertebrates, showing that living and fossil forms were often quite dissimilar. However, the two men differed sharply in their interpretations of the evidence.
Cuvier postulated a series of 'revolutions' of regional extent, during which the fossil forms had become extinct. Replacement species, he reasoned, must have migrated from distant regions unaffected by these revolutions.
Lamarck, on the other hand, could not imagine the occurrence of true extinction in a world of constant flux: the fossil forms would have simply evolved into modern ones in response to gradual environmental change. For Cuvier, proponent of a highly mechanistic conception of organisms, evolution was unthinkable: any significant alteration in the form or function of one part would surely threaten the integrity of the organism as a whole.
The clearest expression of Lamarck's theory of evolution is found in his two-volume 'Zoological Philosophy,' published in 1809. Lamarck viewed life as an endlessly changing continuum of individuals; species were nothing more than convenient abstractions.
His theory had three basic parts: spontaneous generation of the lower life forms; a natural tendency for organisms to attain increasing complexity over time by gradually ascending the 'scale of beings' (a.k.a. 'chain of being'); and adaptation to changing environmental conditions through the inheritance of acquired characters. Although the third part was clearly necessary to explain the great diversity of life -- a single 'scale of beings' could not accommodate all of life's branches -- Lamarck regarded this as a subordinate feature of his system.
Nevertheless, many historians have viewed the inheritance of acquired characters as the centerpiece of Lamarck's theory of evolution, perhaps because this aspect of the theory was emphasized in the late 19th century by 'neo-Lamarckians' opposed to Darwin's natural selection (the classic example cited in favor of the inheritance of acquired characters is the giraffe's neck: by always stretching to reach the leaves at the tops of acacia trees, the giraffe supposedly succeeded by force of habit in gradually lengthening its neck over countless generations).
Lamarck's theory of evolution was generally criticized or ignored by his contemporaries until Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire broke ranks with Cuvier in the late 1820s, citing the familiar dictum 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' as evidence that Lamarck was essentially correct in interpreting the 'scale of beings' literally, rather than metaphorically.
In the final analysis, however, Lamarck must be viewed as something of an anachronism: he continued in the grand Buffonian tradition of hypothetical system-building long after his younger colleagues like Cuvier had adopted a more conservative, empirically grounded approach to science.
ASSESSMENT: Lamarck's theory of evolution was largely ignored by his contemporaries but was resurrected in the late 19th century by 'neo-Lamarckians' opposed to Darwin's natural selection.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He taught <taught> Bonpland*
He was visited by <visited by> William Hooker*
He was a friend of <a pal of> Candolle*
His work pre-figured <anticipated> naturalism*
ONELINER: J-B Lamarck, early evolutionist
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Barthelemy-Madaule, M, Lamarck the Mythical Precursor, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
Burkhardt, RW Jr, The Spirit of System, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1977.
Corsi, P, The Age of Lamarck, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
Greene, JC, Science, Ideology, and World View, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1981.
Jordanova, LJ, Lamarck, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984.
Rudwick, MJS, The Meaning of Fossils (2nd ed.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976.