Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution His Life and Work

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pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. Although it is now a century since Lamarck published the germs of his theory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that the scientific world and the general public have become familiar with the name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819937128
• Langue: English

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PREFACE
Although it is now a century since Lamarck publishedthe germs of his theory, it is perhaps only within the past fiftyyears that the scientific world and the general public have becomefamiliar with the name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.
The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian theoryof organic evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism;the prevalence of these views in the United States, Germany,England, and especially in France, where its author is justlyregarded as the real founder of organic evolution, has invested hisname with a new interest, and led to a desire to learn some of thedetails of his life and work, and of his theory as he unfolded itin 1800 and subsequent years, and finally expounded it in 1809. Thetime seems ripe, therefore, for a more extended sketch of Lamarckand his theory, as well as of his work as a philosophicalbiologist, than has yet appeared.
But the seeker after the details of his life isbaffled by the general ignorance about the man— his antecedents,his parentage, the date of his birth, his early training andeducation, his work as a professor in the Jardin des Plantes, thehouse he lived in, the place of his burial, and his relations tohis scientific contemporaries.
Except the éloges of Geoffroy St. Hilaire andCuvier, and the brief notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, andBourguin, there is no special biography, however brief, except a brochure of thirty-one pages, reprinted from a few scatteredarticles by the distinguished anthropologist, M. Gabriel deMortillet, in the fourth and last volume of a little-known journal, l’Homme , entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe deTransformistes, ses Disciples , Paris, 1887. This exceedinglyrare pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mortillet, withthe assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. A. Mondière, who withothers, under the leadership of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formeda Réunion Lamarck and a Dîner Lamarck , to maintainand perpetuate the memory of the great French transformist. Owingto their efforts, the exact date of Lamarck’s birth, the house inwhich he lived during his lifetime at Paris, and all that we shallever know of his place of burial have been established. It is alasting shame that his remains were not laid in a grave, but wereallowed to be put into a trench, with no headstone to mark thesite, on one side of a row of graves of others better cared for,from which trench his bones, with those of others unknown andneglected, were exhumed and thrown into the catacombs of Paris.Lamarck left behind him no letters or manuscripts; nothing could beascertained regarding the dates of his marriages, the names of hiswives or of all his children. Of his descendants but one is knownto be living, an officer in the army. But his aims in life, hisundying love of science, his noble character and generousdisposition are constantly revealed in his writings.
The name of Lamarck has been familiar to me from myyouth up. When a boy, I used to arrange my collection of shells bythe Lamarckian system, which had replaced the old Linneanclassification. For over thirty years the Lamarckian factors ofevolution have seemed to me to afford the foundation on whichnatural selection rests, to be the primary and efficient causes oforganic change, and thus to account for the origin of variations,which Darwin himself assumed as the starting point or basis of hisselection theory. It is not lessening the value of Darwin’s labors,to recognize the originality of Lamarck’s views, the vigor withwhich he asserted their truth, and the heroic manner in which,against adverse and contemptuous criticism, to his dying day heclung to them.
During a residence in Paris in the spring and summerof 1899, I spent my leisure hours in gathering material for thisbiography. I visited the place of his birth— the little hamlet ofBazentin, near Amiens— and, thanks to the kindness of theschoolmaster of that village, M. Duval, was shown the house whereLamarck was born, the records in the old parish register at the mairie of the birth of the father of Lamarck and of Lamarckhimself. The Jesuit Seminary at Amiens was also visited, in orderto obtain traces of his student life there, though the search wasunsuccessful.
My thanks are due to Professor A. Giard of Paris forkind assistance in the loan of rare books, for copies of his ownessays, especially his Leçon d’Ouverture des Cours del’Évolution des Êtres organisés , 1888, and in facilitating thework of collecting data. Introduced by him to Professor Hamy, thelearned anthropologist and archivist of the Muséum d’HistoireNaturelle, I was given by him the freest access to the archives inthe Maison de Buffon, which, among other papers, contained the MS. Archives du Muséum ; i. e. , the Procès verbaux desSéances tenues par les Officiers du Jardin des Plantes , from1790 to 1830, bound in vellum, in thirty-four volumes. These wereall looked through, though found to contain but little ofbiographical interest relating to Lamarck, beyond proving that helived in that ancient edifice from 1793 until his death in 1829.Dr. Hamy’s elaborate history of the last years of the Royal Gardenand of the foundation of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, in thevolume commemorating the centennial of the foundation of theMuseum, has been of essential service.
My warmest thanks are due to M. Adrien de Mortillet,formerly secretary of the Society of Anthropology of Paris, formost essential aid. He kindly gave me a copy of a very rarepamphlet, entitled Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, sesDisciples . He also referred me to notices bearing on thegenealogy of Lamarck and his family in the Revue de Gascogne for 1876. To him also I am indebted for the privilege of havingelectrotypes made of the five illustrations in the Lamarck ,for copies of the composite portrait of Lamarck by Dr. Gachet, andalso for a photograph of the Acte de Naissance reproduced bythe late M. Salmon.
I have also to acknowledge the kindness shown me byDr. J. Deniker, the librarian of the Bibliothèque du Muséumd’Histoire Naturelle.
I had begun in the museum library, which containsnearly if not every one of Lamarck’s publications, to prepare abibliography of all of Lamarck’s writings, when, to my surprise andpleasure, I was presented with a very full and elaborate one by theassistant-librarian, M. Godefroy Malloisel.
To Professor Edmond Perrier I am indebted for a copyof his valuable Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel ,reprinted from the noble volume commemorative of the centennial ofthe foundation of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, which has provedof much use.
Other sources from which biographical details havebeen taken are Cuvier’s éloge , and the notice of Lamarck,with a list of many of his writings, in the Revue biographiquede la Société malacologique de France , 1886. This notice, whichis illustrated by three portraits of Lamarck, one of which has beenreproduced, I was informed by M. Paul Kleinsieck was prepared bythe late J. R. Bourguignat, the eminent malacologist andanthropologist. The notices by Professor Mathias Duval and by L. A.Bourguin have been of essential service.
As regards the account of Lamarck’s speculative andtheoretical views, I have, so far as possible, preferred, byabstracts and translations, to let him tell his own story, ratherthan to comment at much length myself on points about which theablest thinkers and students differ so much.
It is hoped that Lamarck’s writings referring to theevolution theory may, at no distant date, be reprinted in theoriginal, as they are not bulky and could be comprised in a singlevolume.
This life is offered with much diffidence, thoughthe pleasure of collecting the materials and of putting themtogether has been very great.
Brown University, Providence, R. I. ,
October, 1901.
CHAPTER I
BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER
The life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a manof genius who lived far in advance of his age, and who diedcomparatively unappreciated and neglected. But his original andphilosophic views, based as they were on broad conceptions ofnature, and touching on the burning questions of our day, have,after the lapse of a hundred years, gained fresh interest andappreciation, and give promise of permanent acceptance.
The author of the Flore Française will neverbe forgotten by his countrymen, who called him the French Linné;and he who wrote the Animaux sans Vertèbres at once took thehighest rank as the leading zoölogist of his period. But Lamarckwas more than a systematic biologist of the first order. Besidesrare experience and judgment in the classification of plants and ofanimals, he had an unusually active, inquiring, and philosophicalmind, with an originality and boldness in speculation, andsoundness in reasoning and in dealing with such biological facts aswere known in his time, which have caused his views as to themethod of organic evolution to again come to the front.
As a zoölogical philosopher no one of his timeapproached Lamarck. The period, however, in which he lived was notripe for the hearty and general adoption of the theory of descent.As in the organic world we behold here and there prophetic types,anticipating, in their generalized synthetic nature, the incoming,ages after, of more specialized types, so Lamarck anticipated bymore than half a century the principles underlying the presentevolutionary theories.
So numerous are now the adherents, in some form, ofLamarck’s views, that at the present time evolutionists are dividedinto Darwinians and Lamarckians or Neolamarckians. The factors oforganic evolution as stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many,really comprise the primary or foundation principles or initiativecauses of the origin of life-forms. Hence not only do many of theleading biologists of his native country, but some of those ofGermany, of the United States, and of England, justly regard him asthe founder of the theory of organic evolution.
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