Pierre-Paul Grassé
Pierre-Paul Grassé | |
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Université de Paris | |
Thesis | Contribution à l'étude des flagellés parasites |
Pierre-Paul Grassé (November 27, 1895 in
Biography
Education
Grassé began his studies in Périgueux where his parents owned a small business. He went on to study medicine at the University of Bordeaux and studied biology in parallel, including the lectures of the entomologist Jean de Feytaud (1881–1973). Mobilized during World War I, he was forced to interrupt his studies during four years. By the end of the war he was a military surgeon.
Grassé continued his studies in Paris, focusing exclusively on science. He obtained his
In 1926, Grassé became vice-director of the École supérieure de sériciculture. He submitted his theses, Contribution à l'étude des flagellés parasites, in 1926, and it was published in the Archives de zoologie expérimentale et générale.
Teaching and research
In 1929, Grassé became professor of zoology at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand. He supervised the theses of several students on insects. He conducted his first field research trip in Africa in 1933-1934, and returned there several times (1938–1939, 1945, 1948). During these trips he studied termites, and became one of the great specialists on these insects.
In 1935, he became an Assistant Professor at the
After having been briefly mobilized in
Grassé received numerous honours and titles during his career: commander of the
Publications
Grassé began publishing a very big project in 1946 entitled
He also composed the Termitologia (1982, 1983, 1984), a work in three volumes totalling over 2400 pages. In it Grassé compiles all available knowledge concerning termites. It was by studying symbiotic flagellates in termites that he eventually began studying their hosts. In this publication, Grassé introduced the concept of Stigmergy :
- "Stigmergy manifests itself in the termite mound by the fact that the individual labour of each construction worker stimulates and guides the work of its neighbour.".[3]
He also created three scientific reviews: Arvernia biologica (1932), Insectes sociaux (1953) et Biologia gabonica (1964). He participated in several reviews like the Annales des sciences naturelles and the Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Belgique. Apart from his numerous scientific publications, he published several works popularising science such as La Vie des animaux (Larousse, 1968). He also signed the articles "Évolution" and "Stigmergie" of the Encyclopædia Universalis.
Grassé also authored many works where he talks of his views on evolution and metaphysics such as Toi, ce petit Dieu (Albin Michel, 1971), L’Évolution du vivant, matériaux pour une nouvelle théorie transformiste (Albin Michel, 1973), La Défaite de l’amour ou le triomphe de Freud (Albin Michel, 1976), Biologie moléculaire, mutagenèse et évolution (Masson, 1978), L’Homme en accusation: de la biologie à la politique (Albin Michel, 1980)...
Neo-Lamarckism
Grassé was a supporter of the French tradition of
In support of Lamarck's theories he organised an international congress in Paris in 1947 under the auspices of the
Some authors, like Marcel Blanc explain the strong support of
Evolution of Living Organisms
Grassé presents his arguments against neo-Darwinism in his work L'évolution du vivant (1973), translated into English as Evolution of Living Organisms in 1977. Against the idea which states that the evolution of living things is the product of their adapting to changes in their environments, he opposes living fossils, meaning species which stopped evolving at some point in time and have remained relatively identical to this day regardless of great climatic or geological changes (he cites numerous examples in Les formes panchroniques et les arrêts de l'évolution, p. 133). Therefore, evolution is in his opinion a process which is not necessary, it does not occur in living beings under the constraints of external physical forces (cf. Necessity-utility is not the primus movens of biological evolution, p. 302). To explain evolution he instead thinks that you must look at the internal dynamics of living things.
Biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote in a review that Grassé's belief that evolution is directed by some unknown mechanism does not explain anything. He concluded that "to reject what is known, and to appeal to some wonderful future discovery which may explain it all, is contrary to sound scientific method. The sentence with which Grassé ends his book is: "It is possible that in this domain biology, impotent, yields the floor to metaphysics."[6]
Colin Patterson reviewed Evolution of Living Organisms for the New Scientist stating that the book was a criticism of neo-Darwinism, with the opinion that paleontology is "the only true science of evolution". Patterson, a paleontologist, disputed this statement. He also noted that Grassé's own theory of neo-Lamarckism was "hard to disentangle, and there were other places where Grassé's reasoning was difficult to follow." According to Patterson the book did not mention gene duplication, but this has been well-established in evolution.[7]
Geologist David B. Kitts negatively reviewed the book commenting that all of "Grassé's arguments have been marshaled against Darwinian theory before and, in the opinion of most Darwinians, have been adequately countered." Grassé stated that evolution was driven by an internal factor. Regarding the identification of this factor, Kitts quotes Grassé as saying "perhaps in this area of biology can go no further: the rest is metaphysics". Kitts found this statement unacceptable commenting that "the fundamental issues raised by Grassé's theory of evolution do not even belong to biology, but to some other discipline."[8]
Selected publications
- 1935: Parasites et parasitisme, Armand Collin (Paris) : 224 p..
- 1935: with Max Aron (1892–1974), Précis de biologie animale, Masson (Paris) : viii + 1016 p. – second revised edition in 1939, third edition in 1947, fourth edition in 1948, fifth edition in 1957, sixth edition in 1962, eighth edition in 1966.
- 1963: with A. Tétry, Zoologie, two volumes, Gallimard (Paris), collection encyclopédie de la Pléiade: xx + 1244 p. et xvi + 1040 p.
- 1971: Toi, ce petit dieu ! essai sur l'histoire naturelle de l'homme, Albin Michel (Paris) : 288 p.
- 1973: L'évolution du vivant, matériaux pour une nouvelle théorie transformiste, Albin Michel (Paris) : 477 p. - (a criticism of neo-Darwinism). Republished and translated into English in 1977 under the title Evolution of Living Organisms by Academic Press.
- 1978: Biologie moléculaire, mutagenèse et évolution, Masson (Paris) : 117 p. ISBN 2-225-49203-4
- 1980: L'Homme en accusation : de la biologie à la politique, Albin Michel (Paris) : 354 p. ISBN 2-226-01054-8
- 1982-1986: Termitologia. Vol. I: Anatomie Physilogie Reproduction, 676 pp.; Vol. II: Fondation des Sociétés Construction, 613 pp.; Vol. III: Comportement Socialité Écologie Évolution Systématique, 715 pp. Paris: Masson.
References
- ^ Théodoridès, Jean. (1986). Obituary: Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895-1985). History of Science Journal. Volume 39, No. 1, pp. 79-82.
- ^ Loison, Laurent. (2011). French Roots of French Neo-Lamarckisms, 1879–1985. Journal of the History of Biology. (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer) 44 (4): 713-744.
- ^ Pesson, Paul. (1985). Hommage à Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985), Professeur honoraire à l’Université de Paris, Membre de l'Académie des Sciences. Bulletin de la Société entomologique de France 90 (9-10): 1-7.
- ^ ISBN 2-02-012510-2
- ^ Lapidus, Rémy Lestienne et Roxanne. (2000). Chance, Progress and Complexity in Biological Evolution. SubStance, 29 (1), 91: 39-55.
- ^ Dobzhansky, Theodosius. (1975). Darwinian or 'Oriented' Evolution? L'Evolution du Vivant by Pierre P. Grassé. Evolution. Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 376-378.
- ^ Colin Patterson. (1978). Evolution of Living organisms. New Scientist. 7, September. p. 694.
- ^ Kitts, David B. (1979). Search for the Holy Transformation. Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation by Pierre-P. Grassé. Paleobiology. Vol. 5, No. 3. pp. 353-355.
- Jean Lhoste (1987). Les Entomologistes français. 1750-1950, INRA Éditions et OPIE : 351 p. [244-247]
External links
- Stigmergy: Invisible Writing, Collective Intelligence in Social Insects in Introduction & Self-Organisation by David Gordon for the AI depot.
- Stigmergic Collaboration: A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration by : Elliott, Dr Mark Alan (2007) PhD thesis, Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. The thesis explicitly refers to the work of Pierre-Paul Grassé to define stigmergy, chapter 3.