Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
inheritance of acquired characteristics; Philosophie zoologique
Scientific career
Fields	Biology Natural history Zoology
Institutions	Jardin des Plantes
Author abbrev. (botany)	Lam.
Author abbrev. (zoology)	Lamarck

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Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (

Lamarck fought in the

.

In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, a major work on the classification of

taxonomist

of considerable stature.

The modern era generally remembers Lamarck for a theory of

Biography

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was born in

After his father died in 1760, Lamarck bought himself a horse, and rode across the country to join the French army, which was in Germany at the time. Lamarck showed great physical courage on the battlefield in the Seven Years' War with Prussia, and he was even nominated for the lieutenancy.^[5] Lamarck's company was left exposed to the direct artillery fire of their enemies, and was quickly reduced to just 14 men—with no officers. One of the men suggested that the puny, 17-year-old volunteer should assume command and order a withdrawal from the field; although Lamarck accepted command, he insisted they remain where they had been posted until relieved.

When their colonel reached the remains of their company, this display of courage and loyalty impressed him so much that Lamarck was promoted to officer on the spot. However, when one of his comrades playfully lifted him by the head, he sustained an inflammation in the lymphatic glands of the neck, and he was sent to Paris to receive treatment.^[5] He was awarded a commission and settled at his post in Monaco. There, he encountered Traité des plantes usuelles, a botany book by James Francis Chomel.^[5]

With a reduced pension of only 400 francs a year, Lamarck resolved to pursue a profession. He attempted to study medicine, and supported himself by working in a bank office.

After his studies, in 1778, he published some of his observations and results in a three-volume work, entitled Flore française. Lamarck's work was respected by many scholars, and it launched him into prominence in French science. On 8 August 1778, Lamarck married Marie Anne Rosalie Delaporte.[13] Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, one of the top French scientists of the day, mentored Lamarck, and helped him gain membership to the French Academy of Sciences in 1779 and a commission as a royal botanist in 1781, in which he traveled to foreign botanical gardens and museums.^[14] Lamarck's first son, André, was born on 22 April 1781, and he made his colleague André Thouin the child's godfather.

In his two years of travel, Lamarck collected rare plants that were not available in the Royal Garden, and also other objects of natural history, such as minerals and ores, that were not found in French museums. On 7 January 1786, his second son, Antoine, was born, and Lamarck chose

In 1790, at the height of the

In his first six years as professor, Lamarck published only one paper, in 1798, on the influence of the moon on the Earth's atmosphere.

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle

in which he first outlined his newly developing ideas about evolution.

In 1801, he published Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres, a major work on the classification of invertebrates. In the work, he introduced definitions of natural groups among invertebrates. He categorized echinoderms, arachnids, crustaceans, and annelids, which he separated from the old taxon for worms known as Vermes.^[16] Lamarck was the first to separate arachnids from insects in classification, and he moved crustaceans into a separate class from insects.

In 1802, Lamarck published Hydrogéologie, and became one of the first to use the term

. He argued that global currents tended to flow from east to west, and continents eroded on their eastern borders, with the material carried across to be deposited on the western borders. Thus, the Earth's continents marched steadily westward around the globe.

That year, he also published Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivants, in which he drew out his theory on evolution. He believed that all life was organized in a vertical chain, with gradation between the lowest forms and the highest forms of life, thus demonstrating a path to progressive developments in nature.^[19]

In his own work, Lamarck had favored the then-more traditional theory based on the classical

:

Cuvier was clearly hostile to the materialistic overtones of current transformist theorizing, but it does not necessarily follow that he regarded species origin as supernatural; certainly he was careful to use neutral language to refer to the causes of the origins of new forms of life, and even of man.[22]

Lamarck gradually turned blind; he died in

After his death, Cuvier used the form of a eulogy to denigrate Lamarck:

[Cuvier's] éloge of Lamarck is one of the most deprecatory and chillingly partisan biographies I have ever read—though he was supposedly writing respectful comments in the old tradition of de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

— Gould, 1993^[24]

Lamarckian evolution

While he was working on Hydrogéologie (1802), Lamarck had the idea to apply the principle of erosion to biology. This led him to the basic principle of evolution, which saw the fluids in organs inheriting more complex forms and functions, thus passing on these traits to the organism's descendants.^[12] This was a reversal from Lamarck's previous view, published in his Memoirs of Physics and Natural History (1797), in which he briefly refers to the immutability of species.^[25]

Lamarck stressed two main themes in his biological work (neither of them to do with soft inheritance). The first was that the environment gives rise to changes in animals. He cited examples of blindness in moles, the presence of teeth in mammals and the absence of teeth in birds as evidence of this principle. The second principle was that life was structured in an orderly manner and that many different parts of all bodies make possible the organic movements of animals.^[19]

Although he was not the first thinker to advocate organic evolution, he was the first to develop a truly coherent evolutionary theory.^[10] He outlined his theories regarding evolution first in his Floreal lecture of 1800, and then in three later published works:

• Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants, 1802.
• Philosophie zoologique, 1809.
• Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres, (in seven volumes, 1815–22).

Lamarck employed several mechanisms as drivers of evolution, drawn from the common knowledge of his day and from his own belief in the chemistry before

. He used these mechanisms to explain the two forces he saw as constituting evolution: force driving animals from simple to complex forms and a force adapting animals to their local environments and differentiating them from each other. He believed that these forces must be explained as a necessary consequence of basic physical principles, favoring a materialistic attitude toward biology.

Le pouvoir de la vie: The complexifying force

inheritance of acquired characteristics), creating a diversity of species and genera. Popular views of Lamarckism consider only an aspect of the adaptive force.^[26]

Lamarck referred to a tendency for organisms to become more complex, moving "up" a ladder of progress. He referred to this phenomenon as Le pouvoir de la vie or la force qui tend sans cesse à composer l'organisation (The force that perpetually tends to make order). Lamarck believed in the ongoing spontaneous generation of simple living organisms through action on physical matter by a material life force.^[27][26]

Lamarck ran against the modern chemistry promoted by Lavoisier (whose ideas he regarded with disdain), preferring to embrace a more traditional alchemical view of the elements as influenced primarily by earth, air, fire, and water. He asserted that once living organisms form, the movements of fluids in living organisms naturally drove them to evolve toward ever greater levels of complexity:^[27]

The rapid motion of fluids will etch canals between delicate tissues. Soon their flow will begin to vary, leading to the emergence of distinct organs. The fluids themselves, now more elaborate, will become more complex, engendering a greater variety of secretions and substances composing the organs.

— Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertebres, 1815

He argued that organisms thus moved from simple to complex in a steady, predictable way based on the fundamental physical principles of alchemy. In this view, simple organisms never disappeared because they were constantly being created by spontaneous generation in what has been described as a "steady-state biology". Lamarck saw spontaneous generation as being ongoing, with the simple organisms thus created being transmuted over time becoming more complex. He is sometimes regarded as believing in a teleological (goal-oriented) process where organisms became more perfect as they evolved, though as a materialist, he emphasized that these forces must originate necessarily from underlying physical principles. According to the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Lamarck denied, absolutely, the existence of any 'perfecting tendency' in nature, and regarded evolution as the final necessary effect of surrounding conditions on life."^[28] Charles Coulston Gillispie, a historian of science, has written "life is a purely physical phenomenon in Lamarck", and argued that Lamarck's views should not be confused with the vitalist school of thought.^[29]

L'influence des circonstances: The Adaptive Force

The second component of Lamarck's theory of evolution was the adaptation of organisms to their environment. This could move organisms upward from the ladder of progress into new and distinct forms with local adaptations. It could also drive organisms into evolutionary blind alleys, where the organism became so finely adapted that no further change could occur. Lamarck argued that this adaptive force was powered by the interaction of organisms with their environment, by the use and disuse of certain characteristics.

First law: use and disuse

First Law: In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly becomes weak and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity or ability to function as expected, until it finally disappears.^[30]

Second law: inheritance of acquired characteristics

Second Law: All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.^[30]

The last clause of this law introduces what is now called

Religious views

In his book Philosophie zoologique, Lamarck referred to God as the "sublime author of nature". Lamarck's religious views are examined in the book Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution (1901) by Alpheus Packard. According to Packard from Lamarck's writings, he may be regarded as a deist.^[34]

The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse described Lamarck, "as believing in God as an unmoved mover, creator of the world and its laws, who refuses to intervene miraculously in his creation."^[35] Biographer James Moore described Lamarck as a "thoroughgoing deist".^[36]

The historian Jacques Roger has written, "Lamarck was a materialist to the extent that he did not consider it necessary to have recourse to any spiritual principle... his deism remained vague, and his idea of creation did not prevent him from believing everything in nature, including the highest forms of life, was but the result of natural processes."^[37]

Legacy

Jardin des Plantes

, Paris

Lamarck is known largely for his views on evolution, which have been dismissed in favour of developments in Darwinism. His theory of evolution only achieved fame after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), which spurred critics of Darwin's new theory to fall back on Lamarckian evolution as a more well-established alternative.^[38]

Lamarck is usually remembered for his belief in the then commonly held theory of

(the rest of the body); thus, nothing which happens to the soma may be passed on with the germ plasm. This model allegedly underlies the modern understanding of inheritance.

Lamarck constructed one of the first theoretical frameworks of organic

Darwin allowed a role for use and disuse as an evolutionary mechanism subsidiary to natural selection, most often in respect of disuse.

is sometimes described as a form of Lamarckian inheritance of nongenetic traits.

Species and other taxa named by Lamarck

During his lifetime, Lamarck named a large number of species, many of which have become synonyms. The

]

Species named in his honour

The

.

The International Plant Names Index gives 116 records of plant species named after Lamarck.^[45]

Among the marine species, no fewer than 103 species or genera carry the epithet "lamarcki", "lamarckii" or "lamarckiana", but many have since become synonyms. Marine species with valid names include:^[43]

Major works

• 1778 Flore françoise, ou, Description succincte de toutes les plantes qui croissent naturellement en France 1st ed.
  • 2nd ed. 1795, 3rd 1805 (
    de Candolle
    ed.)
• 1795 Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques (in French). Vol. 1. Milano: Luigi Veladini. 1795.
• 1809. Philosophie zoologique, ou Exposition des considérations relatives à l'histoire naturelle des animaux..., Paris. Translated with introduction and commentary in 1914 by Hugh S. R. Elliot as Zoological Philosophy. Arguably the most comprehensive discussion of the topic of Lamarckism and more of Lamarck's views.
• Encyclopédie méthodique
  )
  • Supplement 1810–1817
  • L'Illustration des genres, vol. I: 1791, vol. II: 1793, vol. III: 1800, Supplement by Poiret 1823

On

:

• 1801. Système des animaux sans vertèbres, ou tableau général des classes, des ordres et des genres de ces animaux; présentant leurs caractères essentiels et leur distribution, d'après la considération de leurs..., Paris, Detreville, VIII: 1–432.
• 1815–22. Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres, présentant les caractères généraux et particuliers de ces animaux..., Tome 1 (1815): 1–462; Tome 2 (1816): 1–568; Tome 3 (1816): 1–586; Tome 4 (1817): 1–603; Tome 5 (1818): 1–612; Tome 6, Pt.1 (1819): 1–343; Tome 6, Pt.2 (1822): 1–252; Tome 7 (1822): 1–711.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Bange, Raphaël; Corsi, Pietro (n.d.). "Chronologie de la vie de Jean-Baptiste Lamarck" (in French).
  Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Archived from the original
  on 12 April 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2007.
• Bowler, Peter (1989). Evolution : the history of an idea (Revised ed.). University of California Press.
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• Burkhardt, Richard W. Jr. (1970). "Lamarck, evolution, and the politics of science".
  S2CID 33402055
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• Coleman, William L. (1977). Biology in the Nineteenth Century: problems of form, function, and transformation. Cambridge:
  ISBN 978-0-521-29293-1
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• Curtis, Caitlin; Millar, Craig; Lambert, David (September 2018). "The Sacred Ibis debate: The first test of evolution". PLOS Biology. 16 (9): e2005558.
  PMID 30260949
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• Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal
  . 20: 1–22.
• Damkaer, David M. (2002). The Copepodologist's Cabinet: a Biographical and Bibliographical History. Philadelphia:
  ISBN 978-0-87169-240-5
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• Darwin, Charles (1861–1882). "Historical sketch". On the Origin of Species (3rd–6th ed.). London: John Murray.
• ISBN 978-0-393-95849-2
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• Delange, Yves (1984). Lamarck, sa vie, son œuvre. Arles: Actes Sud.
  ISBN 978-2-903098-97-1
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• Dudenredaktion; Kleiner, Stefan; Knöbl, Ralf (2015) [First published 1962]. Das Aussprachewörterbuch [The Pronunciation Dictionary] (in German) (7th ed.). Berlin: Dudenverlag.
  ISBN 978-3-411-04067-4
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• Fitzpatrick, Tony (2006). "Researcher gives hard thoughts on soft inheritance: above and beyond the gene". Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved 8 October 2011.
• ISBN 0-691-02350-6
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• ——— (2001). The lying stones of Marrakech : penultimate reflections in natural history. Vintage.
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• ——— (2002).
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• Haig, David (2007). "Weismann Rules! OK? Epigenetics and the Lamarckian temptation". Biology and Philosophy. 22 (3): 415–428.
  S2CID 16322990
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• Jablonka, Eva; Lamb, Marion J.; Avital, Eytan (1998). "'Lamarckian' mechanisms in darwinian evolution". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 13 (5): 206–210.
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• Jurmain, Robert; Lynn Kilgore; Wenda Trevathan; Russell L. Ciochon (2011). Introduction to Physical Anthropology (13th ed.).
  ISBN 978-1-111-29793-0
  .
• Lamarck, J. B. (1914). Zoological Philosophy. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Larson, Edward J (May 2004). ""A Growing sense of progress". Evolution: The remarkable history of a Scientific Theory. New York: Modern Library.
  ISBN 9780679642886
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• Mantoy, Bernard (1968). Lamarck. Savants du monde entier. Vol. 36. Paris: Seghers.
• ISBN 978-0-674-63752-8
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• Mitchell, Peter Chalmers (1911). "Evolution" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Moore, James R. (1981). The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870–1900. Cambridge University Press.
• Osborn, Henry Fairfield (1894). From the Greeks to Darwin. Macmillan and Company.
• Osborn, Henry Fairfield (1905). From the Greeks to Darwin: an outline of the development of the evolution idea (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan.
• Packard, Alpheus Spring (1901). Lamarck, the founder of Evolution: his life and work with translations of his writing on organic evolution. New York: Longmans, Green.
• Packard, Alpheus Spring (2008) [1901]. Lamarck, The Founder of Evolution. Wildhern Press.
• Roger, Jacques (1986). "The Mechanist Conception of Life". In Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (eds.). God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. University of California Press.
• ISBN 978-0-226-73107-0
  .
• Ruse, Michael (1999). The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. University of Chicago Press.
• Szyfman, Léon (1982). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck et son époque. Paris: Masson.
  ISBN 978-2-225-76087-7
  .
• Junko A. Arai; Shaomin Li; Dean M. Hartley; Larry A. Feig (2009). "Transgenerational rescue of a genetic defect in long-term potentiation and memory formation by juvenile enrichment".
  PMID 19193896
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• Waggoner, Ben; Speer, B. R. (2 September 1998). "Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)". UCMP Berkeley. Retrieved 16 December 2018.
• Weber, A. S. (2000). Nineteenth-Century Science: An Anthology. Broadview Press.
  ISBN 978-1-55111-165-0
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External links

• The Imaginary Lamarck: A Look at Bogus "History" in Schoolbooks by Michael Ghiselin
• Works by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Jean-Baptiste Lamarck at Internet Archive
• Epigenetics: Genome, Meet Your Environment
• Science Revolution Followers of Lamarck
• Encyclopédie Méthodique: Botanique At: Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: works and heritage, online materials about Lamarck (23,000 files of Lamarck's herbarium, 11,000 manuscripts, books, etc.) edited online by Pietro Corsi (Oxford University) and realised by
  CNRS
  in France.
• Biography of Lamarck at University of California Museum of Paleontology
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 101–102.
• Memoir of Lamarck by James Duncan
• Lamarck's writings are available in facsimile (PDF) and in Word format (in French) at www.lamarck.cnrs.fr. The search engine allows full text search.
• Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivans (1801) – fully digitized facsimile from Linda Hall Library.
• Hydrogéologie (1802) – digitized facsimile from Linda Hall Library
• Lamarck and Natural Selection, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones and Simon Conway Morris (In Our Time, 26 December 2003)