Abstract
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his ‘Lamarckian’ belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young’s signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to place Darwin’s work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck’s social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck’s ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation.
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Notes
This is in contrast to much of the literature on Lamarck from the early twentieth century, a time when biologists and historians embraced the argument that evolutionary theory required aspects beyond the mechanisms then considered ‘Darwinian.’ Many of these scholars were proponents of an expanded, ‘Neo-Lamarckian’ version of Lamarck’s arguments, or at least attested to the increased popularity of Lamarckism and Neo-Lamarckism during this period, particularly in the US. For example, see Packard (1901, pp. 332–367), Landrieu (1909), Wheeler and Barbour (1933), “Introduction” and pp. xiii–xxxi; Nordenskiöld (1936, pp. 316–330), More (1925, pp. 163–184).
In the early twentieth century, the conception of Lamarck as a forerunner to Darwin was also invoked by some French historians, often using the precursor myth to argue that Lamarck’s theory was unjustly ignored prior to Darwin’s. For example, see de Nussac (1912, pp. 64–68).
Where Lamarck’s other interests have been noted, his physico-chemical theories have often been considered an embarrassing detraction from his more serious biological work, especially given his repeated attempts to refute Lavoisierian chemistry (Burlingame 1981), and although his discussion of human physiology has sparked some interest in the extent to which he contributed to nineteenth-century debates about mind and psychology, scholars have noted that his ideas were often spread indirectly, via students or critics (Baertschi 2005; Gissis 2010; Richards 1979, 1982; Young 1973).
The project was not actually read until 1793.
In Zoological philosophy, Lamarck provided a “hypothetical” account of how the orang-outang might have acquired the habits and physical traits characteristic of humans, suggesting more sympathy with Rousseau’s ‘progressive’ natural history of humanity than with Buffon’s story of degeneration (1809c, pp. 169–173). It was not necessary, however, to concur with Rousseau’s trajectory of human history in order for Lamarck to accept his belief that ‘primitive peoples’ enjoyed more natural and harmonious social arrangements than civilized Europeans [see Moran (1993, p. 57)]. Furthermore, Buffon’s natural history of humanity underlay his argument that it was the rational human soul, not anatomy or physiology, that distinguished humans from apes; Rousseau was less certain that there really was a distinction between humans and apes, suggesting that the only way to be sure would be to conduct impractical and distasteful interbreeding experiments (Zammito 2018, pp. 194–195). Lamarck remained circumspect on the topic of a human soul or vital principle, but his sympathy with Rousseau’s progressive natural history suggests at the very least that he was willing to consider a materialist and even atheist perspective [see also Corsi (1988, 2006)].
Lamarck’s conception of the body as a hydraulic machine was far from novel; European physicians since the seventeenth century had drawn from kinematics and mechanical philosophy to develop such models (Staum 1980, pp. 55–63).
Botanical gardens served as sites at which naturalists could observe and demonstrate the effects of culture on nature, a function Lamarck noted in the Encyclopédie méthodique (1783, Vol. 3, pp. 211–215).
Landrieu relayed that the archives of the Paris Faculty of Medicine from the years predating the Revolution had been lost, and the “Commentaires de ce qui s’est fait et passé de remarquable à la Faculté de médecine de Paris” in the Bibliothèque contained no record of Lamarck. Landrieu speculated that he may have been affiliated only with the Faculté’s “brilliant rival” l’Académie de Chirurgie (Landrieu 1909, p. 25, n. 2).
The “Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de feu M. le chevalier J.B. Lamarck” grouped Lamarck’s books loosely by subject matter, and the overtly medical, physiological, and anatomical texts appear on pp. 4–5, nos. 63–94.
Many Europeans interested in zoology, anatomy, and natural history similarly sought medical training. According to Zammito (2018), “Medicine was the only academic and professional path for a naturalist in early modern Europe” (p. 7).
Lamarck used the term économie animale, as well as the related organisation animale, in every major text from the Recherches of 1794 through the Système of 1820. For this insight I am indebted to the text-searchable editions of Lamarck’s works maintained by CNRS under the direction of Pietro Corsi, www.lamarck.net.
The letter in which Lamarck provided this explanation, dated 29 floréal an V, appeared in the Bulletin de la société française d’histoire de la médecine, pp. 185–186 (Legrand 1909).
The emphasis on sight (and by extension blindness) was shared by many French savants in the eighteenth century, partly as a consequence of Lockean epistemology and the ‘Molyneux problem.’ On Condillac’s and Rousseau’s associations of sight with self-development in their writings on educational reform, see Spary (2000, p. 196). On the broader sensationalist tendency to equate blindness with moral solipsism and Cartesianism, see Riskin (2002, Ch. 2), Paulson (1987), and Paterson (2016).
Lamarck’s account of instinctual behaviors described them as examples of such relatively fixed traits: two parents who had developed similar habits and propensities could pass along the acquired changes in their organization to their offspring, who would then be inclined toward similar behavior. In infants the instincts dictated their behavior more or less mechanically, but this did not mean that Lamarck believed in ‘innate ideas.’ See Lamarck (1809b, Vol. II, pp. 362–364).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my advisor, Piers J. Hale, for his invaluable mentorship and insightful feedback on countless iterations of this paper over the past several years. I am also grateful to Robert Nye, Michael Osborne, and others who provided thoughtful comments and questions at the 2021 online Friday Harbor meetings of the Columbia History of Science Group, and the 2021 virtual Midwest Junto for the History of Science. Thank you to both the current and former editors editors of this journal—Nicolas Rasmussen, Betty Smocovitis, Karen Rader, and Marsha Richmond—as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their thoughtful and thought-provoking comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
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Testa, C. Species Transformation and Social Reform: The Role of the Will in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Transformist Theory. J Hist Biol 56, 125–151 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09707-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09707-x