Biography

Textbooks explain why the mythical contest between Lamarck and Darwin took place and why it went in Darwin’s favor. It tells fictitious stories about tests that supposedly have refuted Lamarck’s theory. In reality, those tests have been directed not at Lamarck’s particular claims but at the ideas of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is an idea that was held by Lamarck and Darwin alike, and by most of their scientific contemporaries.[br /]
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One such test has been described in the high school book named Addison Wesley’s Biology under the headline Lamarck Disproven. In 1889, German biologist August Weismann showed that Lamarck’s explanation of evolution was incorrect. Weismann cut off the tails of hundreds of mice for 22 generations. Lamarck’s hypothesis would predict that eventually mice would be born with shorter tails or no tails at all. However, Weismann’s mice continued to produce baby mice with normal tails. Weismann concluded that changes in the body during an individual’s lifetime do not affect the reproductive cells or the offspring.[br /]
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The story combines false history backed by a fundamental misconception. The acquired characteristics that figured in Lamarck’s thinking were changes that resulted from an individual’s own drives and actions, not from the action of external agents. Lamarck was not concerned with wounds, injuries on mutilations and nothing that Lamarck had set forth was tested or disproved by Weismann’s tail chopping experiment.[br /]
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Textbooks perpetuate all these follies so that they can perpetuate a bogus dichotomy between Lamarck’s and Darwin’s views. When Darwin’s Theory of Evolution became widely known, it made evolution a matter of serious scientific discourse. It also focused attention on the principle of Natural Selection. A lot of people did not like this. The French – colored by chauvinism wanted an explanatory principle designed to suit a Frenchman only. Others did not like the relentlessly competitive world that selection implied. Thus, people espoused various alternatives to natural selection, and a number of factions were formed.[br /]
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Those who favored natural selection as the chief mechanism of evolution, and who rejected the inheritance of acquired characteristics – were called Neo-Darwinians. The other group, which advocated a wide variety of evolutionary mechanisms and also accepted the premise that acquired traits would pass from one generation to the next, were called Neo-Lamarckians. With advancement in genetics, the ideas of Neo- Lamarckians were abandoned.[br /]
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An uninformed textbook writer, upon hearing that there was a controversy between Neo-Lamarckians and Neo-Darwinians said, "I must have inferred that Lamarck and Darwin themselves have been opponents, and their ideas about evolution must have been utterly different, must have invented a tale based on his false inferences." Ever since, textbook companies have been copying and recopying it.[br /]
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Lamarck’s ideas about giraffes – that their necks grew longer as they stretched for distant leaves, and that their elongated necks were inherited by their offspring – has been cited and illustrated in one schoolbook after another. A passage about giraffes really does occur in Lamarck’s writings, but the schoolbook writers obviously have not looked at it. Instead they have seized upon an added version of the giraffe scenario, and they have been recycling that version for decades.[br /]
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They present it in a highly misleading way. They don’t tell that the giraffe scenario is merely a hypothetical example of how a Lamarckian "mechanism might work – not an example of something that has actually been studied scientifically. They also fail to tell that Lamarck’s notion about giraffes, like all his evolutionary speculations, involved the mystical principle of progress toward perfection".[br /]
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The man who coined the word biologie (biology) and one of its pioneers was French scientist Lamarck. He is remembered most for his Theory of Evolution, which proposed that the characteristics of an organism that develop during its lifetime in response to its environment are inherited by, or passed on to, its offspring. Charles Darwin’s theories, published 30 years after Lamarck’s death disagreed with Lamarck’s conclusions, which were later discarded by most scientists as invalid.[br /]
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Born in rural France, Lamarck discontinued at an early stage, careers at the church, the army, the bank and in music – for botany. He went on to study invertebrates, a term coined by himself. He first published his views in 1801 and enlarged them in 1809 in his Philosophie Zoologique and subsequently, in 1815, in his introduction to his Historie Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebres. In these works, he upholds the doctrine that man, including other species descended from other species. His theory of evolution came to be known as The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics. This described the means by which the structure of an organism altered over generations. Lamarck’s works were largely ignored or attacked during his lifetime. He never won the acceptance and esteem of his colleagues, only to die in poverty and obscurity.[br /]
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People took notice of this genius only in the mid - 19th century which is rather unfortunate. Yet, the unmistakable genius and spirit of his, is for us to discover and revel at, that such a mortal too walked on this earth, trying to unravel its mysteries.[br /]
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[b]August 1, 1744[/b] Born at Bazentin-le-Petit in Picardy, France.[br /]
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[b]1756[/b] Entered Jesuit seminary at Amiens as his father wanted him to make a career in the church.[br /]
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[b]1760[/b] His father died.[br /]
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[b]1761[/b] Quit Jesuit college and joined the French Army. Distinguished for bravery and promoted very soon.[br /]
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[b]1768[/b] Left the Army due to accidental injury, worked as a bank clerk in Paris and studied Medicine and Botany.[br /]
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[b]1778[/b] Published book on Plants of France Flore Francaise.[br /]
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[b]1792[/b] Married Delapoute, the mother of his first six children, on her deathbed, after being together since 1777.[br /]
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[b]1793[/b] Appointed assistant Botanist at the Royal Botanical Garden, the Jardin des Plantes.[br /]
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[b]1794[/b] Appointed a professor of Natural History of insects and worms in the National Museum of Natural History.[br /]
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[b]1795[/b] Married second time to Charlotte.[br /]
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[b]1797[/b] Death of second wife Charlotte.[br /]
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[b]1798[/b] Married third time to Julie Mallet.[br /]
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[b]1808[/b] Distinguished 10 classes of invertebrates.[br /]
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[b]1809[/b] Published Philosophie Zoologique.[br /]
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[b]1815[/b] Published first volume of Historie Naturelle des Animaux san Vertebres.[br /]
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[b]1819[/b] Death of third wife Julie Mallet.[br /]
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[b]1822[/b] Published second volume of Historie Naturelle des Animaux san Vertebres.[br /]
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[b]1829[/b] Died, blind and penniless in obscurity.[br /]
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Lamarck’s first book Flore Francaise was published in three volumes in 1778, with the support of a French naturalist – Georges Louis Buffon. Botany had become universally popular then, and a cross-section of public greeted his Flore Francaise as a useful manual for identification of different flowers. This volume brought him great acclaim, and remained a standard work on the subject for many years. It did not adhere slavishly to the methods of the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnecus and won him appointment to the Academy of Science, which at that time was restricted to 42 members. This was in preference to scientists with much longer careers behind them. Buffon had also been the influential factor for his appointment at the Academy.[br /]
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Lamarck was one of the pioneers of the modern concept of the museum collection, an array of objects whose arrangement constitutes a classification under institutional sponsorship, maintained and kept up to date by specialists. When the National Museum of Natural History – Jardin des Plantes was founded in 1793, he was placed in charge of invertebrates – a field he was far from specialized. Despite lack of expertise, Lamarck committed himself to learning everything he could about invertebrates. In fact, he was the one who coined the term ‘invertebrate’ and categorized and present the museum’s vast and disorganized collection appropriately.[br /]
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He discovered a system of segregating or classifying and sub-dividing the living organisms according to type, and established the standard for later systems of invertebrate taxonomy. He, then began formulating new ideas about the relationships between animals, and then about the transmutation of species into new ones.[br /]
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In 1800, he announced a revision of the classification of lower class of animals which were left unclassified by Linnecus. His first major work on invertebrates, Systeme des ammaux sans vertebraes, on tablo general des classes was published in 1801. It reflected current research, most notably the anatomical studies of Cuvier, and established the basic arrangement for these animals that secured its status as a guide to inquiry throughout the 19th century and is still largely accepted.[br /]
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The systematic study of invertebrates climaxed with the publication of his life’s work – Historie Naturelle des Animaux sans vertebraes – Natural History of Invertebrate Animals. The first volume of this impressive seven volume work was published in 1815 and the second in 1822. It was a complete indication of his proposal to establish museum collections as basis for revisionary work in systematic biology.[br /]
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Lamarck’s works were not restricted to biology alone. By the end of the 18th century, he had learned enough of chemistry and physiology to persuade the most acute inquirers that new understandings might be attained through patient search for clues to fundamental relationships. Lamarck feared that science would remain confined to a domain of a few specialists.[br /]
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So, he conceived a plan for a series of treatises, elaborating a unified view of physical processes like chemistry, geology, climate and life. The first of these was a two volume speculative treatment of matter and energy, Recherches sur les causes des principaun faits physiques et particularement sur celles de la combustion (1794 Research on the causes of principal Physical Facts and particularly those of Combustion) followed by Refutation de la throne pneumatique, on de la nowelle doctrine des chimistes modernes (1796 : Refutation of the Pneumatic Theory or of the New Doctrine for Modern Chemists) in which he opposed his own theory of combustion to the views of Lavoisier and Count Antoine de Fourcroy. Neither of Lamarck’s works was calculated to the mood of caution then coming to govern most serious scientific work, and he did not know how to dramatize his views to gain wider audiences. Perhaps this failing on his part may have caused a breech that tend to make a person unpopular.[br /]
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His Hydrogeologie (1802 : Hydrogeology) offered a history of the earth interpreted as a series of inundations by a global sea, each accompanied by organic deposits building up the continents. Lamarck recognized that the type of fossil occurring in a deposit would permit inferences as to whether the deposit had been built up as deep-marine sediments or as coastal deposits. The book also revealed his extraordinary perception of the vastness of geological time and space.[br /]
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In 1809, he published his most famous work – Philosophie Zoologique. This volume describes his theory of transmutation. Lamarck’s evolutionism became known as The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, which described the means by which the structure of an organism got altered over generations.[br /]
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[b]LAMARCK’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION[/b][br /]
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Lamarck’s theoretical observations on evolution, referred to in the early 19th century as transformism or transmutation, preceded his intensive observational work on invertebrates. With his colleagues, French naturalists Georges Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, Lamarck accepted the view that in Nature, animals were arranged on one continuous natural scale. According to him, once Nature formed life, the arrangement of all subsequent forms of life was result of environment interacting with the organization of organic beings. From the simplest forms of life, more complex forms emerged naturally. Their ideas were initially presented in Lamarck’s major theoretical work - Philosophie Zoologique and he elaborated them throughout his career. His final treatment of his hypothesis was included in his multi-volume work on invertebrates. Here, Lamarck explained his march de la nature – Scale of Nature as being controlled by three biological laws :[br /]
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1. Environmental Influence on Organ Development[br /]

2. Change in Body Structure based on Use and Disuse of Parts[br /]

3. Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics[br /]
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Lamarck distinguished 10 classes of invertebrates in 1808 and arranged these classes in order of complexities and suggested that it was the order through which the species had evolved. He expanded his system from single celled organisms to man in his Philosophie Zoologique. He arranged all animals in a graduated sequence, beginning with mammals and working in order of decreasing complexity to reptiles, fishes, invertebrates, and eventually down to the polyps. This hierarchy represented the sequence of evolution.[br /]
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He suggested four laws to explain why and how animal life could have changed.[br /]
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1. The life force tends to increase the volume of the body and to enlarge its parts.[br /]

2. New organs can be produced in a body to satisfy a new need.[br /]

3. Organs develop in proportion to their use.[br /]

4. Changes that occur in the organs of an animal are transmitted to that animal’s progeny.[br /]
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Lamarck believed that a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of organisms, leading to changes in their behavior. Altered behavior leads to greater or lesser use of a given structure or organ. Use would cause the structure to increase in size over several generations, whereas disuse would cause it to shrink or even disappear. This rule was called the First Law by Lamarck in his book Philosophie Zoologique. Lamarck’s Second Law states that all such changes are heritable. The result of these laws is the continuous, gradual change in all organisms, as they adapt to their respective environments, satisfying the physiological needs of the organism.[br /]
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But the highlight of Lamarckian evolution was The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics. This described the means by which the structure of an organism altered over generations and changes occurred because an animal passed on to its offspring, physiological changes it had undergone in its own lifetime. These changes were a response to its survival needs. The long legs and webbed feet of wading birds, for example, took birth out of the need by this animal’s ancestors to feed on fish. In their attempt to wade in deeper and still keep their bodies dry, they would unconsciously adopt the habit of stretching their legs to their full extent, making them minutely longer in the process. This trait would be passed on to the next generation of birds, who would in turn stretch their legs, until over many generations the wading birds legs became those of the pelican. As the long-legged birds waded deeper, the habit of spreading the toes in order not to sink into the sand, they would stretch the skin in between, eventually giving rise to webbed feet.[br /]
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Conversely, the disuse of an organ would cause it to withdraw and disappear, which explained how snakes lost their legs. Although no part of this theory was based on scientific fact, the process was an ingenious interpretation of observing detail.[br /]
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• Do we not therefore perceive that by the action of the laws of organization… nature has in favorable times, places and climates multiplied her first germs of animality, given place to developments of their organizations…and increased and diversified their organs ?
Text of Lecture given at Musei National d’ Historie Naturelle, Paris, May 1803[br /]
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• …we perceive that, relative to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the invertebrate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature…show us, much better than the higher animals, the true course of nature, and the means which she has used and still unceasingly employs to give existence to all the living bodies of which we have knowledge.[br /]
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• …time and favorable conditions are the two principal means which nature has employed in giving existence to all her productions. We know that for her time has no limit, and that consequently she always has it at her disposal.[br /]
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Lamarck was the first man whose conclusions concerning the origin of species excited much attention. He first did the great service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as inorganic world, being the result of law and not of miraculous interposition.[br /]
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His first book was on the Plants of France – Flore Francaise, which brought him acclaim. It remained a standard work for many years. He was elected to the prestigious French Academy of Sciences in preference to scientists with much longer careers behind them. He worked in the Royal Herbarium at the Jardin des Plantes and was instrumental in its reorganization in 1793, into the French Museum of Natural History.[br /]
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He coined the term invertebrates – (animals without backbones) and categorized the museum’s vast and disorganized collection. His system of dividing and subdividing the organisms according to type, set the standard for later systems of invertebrate taxonomy, and has not yet been discarded.[br /]
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Discovering that animals varied sometimes by minute degrees, Lamarck began to formulate new ideas about the relationship between animals, and then about the transmutation of species into new ones. His works on invertebrates represent a great advance over existing classifications. He was the first to separate Crustacea, Arachnida and Annelida from the Insecta. His classification of the molluscs was far advanced than anything proposed previously. He broke with tradition in removing the tunicates and the barnacles from the Mollusca.[br /]
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He also anticipated the work of Schleilden and Schwann in cell theory. He even found time to write on physics and meteorology, including some annual compilations of weather data. But Lamarck is best known for this theory of evolution. Discovering that it is often very difficult to draw a distinct line between two closely related species, Lamarck concluded that species in general, were the result of gradual improvements in organization rather than acts of special creation. The organs of an animal did not give rise to its special habits and faculties, but on the contrary, its habits, mode of life and environment controlled the shape of its body, the number and state of its organs, and lastly, the faculties which it possesses. Thus, characteristics were ‘acquired’. Further, these characteristics were passed on to the offspring's also. Therefore, the theory came to be known as the inheritance of acquired characters.[br /]
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