Jean Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (Bazentin, August 1, 1744 - Paris, December 18, 1829) was a French naturalist, one of the great men of the time of the systematization of natural history, close in their influence to Linnaeus, Leclerc and Cuvier.

Lamarck formulated the first theory of biological evolution, in 1802 he coined the term "biology" to designate the science of living beings and was the founder of invertebrate paleontology.

Biography

He was born on August 1, 1744 in Bazentin (Somme), into a millionaire family with a military tradition. Between 1755 and 1759 he studied with the Jesuits of Amiens and in 1761 he began his military career, reaching the rank of officer on July 16 of that same year on the battlefield of Villinghausen.

An accidental episode and the injuries it causes prevent him from continuing in the army (a fellow soldier, as a game or in the course of a dispute, lifts him by the head causing the injuries). For a time he went to work as an accountant to later become interested in natural sciences. He studied medicine, never actually practicing it, later becoming interested in Botany influenced by Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu.

In a short period of time, in 1778, he finished his first treatise, Flore française, which, praised by Buffon, was printed by L'Imprimerie Royale and opened the doors of the Academy of Sciences that makes him a member the following year. In this first work, Flore française , appears his first contribution to Biology, using the dichotomous method to help identify plants, a method currently used in botany and also in zoology.

He worked in the Jardin des plantes until 1793, when at his proposal it became the Museum of Natural History (Musée d'Histoire Naturelle) and he was appointed professor of Natural Sciences of animals lower (invertebrates, a concept introduced by Lamarck in the form of "animals without vertebrae", since until then animals were divided by the presence or absence of blood, or as white-blooded animals and red-blooded animals).

From the outset, the museum becomes an alternative to the then obsolete Sorbonne. Lamarck started all of his courses with a Discours d'ouverture in which he expressed his thoughts as it evolved, some of these speeches have come down to us. In the opening speech of course VIII (1800) he outlines the general lines of his ideas on the evolution of life that will be developed in 1809 in his book Zoological Philosophy .

Between 1799 and 1811 he published eleven yearbooks on meteorology that have passed, due to their content, as his least scientific work. He considered that meteorological phenomena were not accidental, that they were due to causes and that these causes would create cycles by which it would be possible to predict them, while these yearbooks were dotted with estimates that were considered insane.

In 1802 he published Hydrogéologie conceived as the first part of a trilogy on the physics of the Earth, with a second and third part that was never published: Metéorologie and Biologie, the latter dedicated to living beings.

In 1809 he published his work Zoological Philosophy in which he developed his evolutionary ideas, becoming the first theory on the evolution of life. His Zoological Philosophy circulated widely and the idea of the evolution of life and specifically his theory led to great debates that served to spread evolutionary thought (Lyell in Principles of Geology and Robert Chambers in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation answered it from different positions). He also caused him to fall from grace. Napoleon publicly refused a copy when it was offered to him, making a fool of himself.

On Zoological Philosophy Haeckel at the end of the XIX century wrote:

The work of Lamarck is truly, fully and strictly monistic, that is, mechanical; so the unity of the efficient causes in the organic and anorganic nature, the fundamental basis of these causes attributed to the physical and chemical properties of the matter; the absence of a special vital force or of a final organic cause; the origin of all organisms of a short number of ancestors, exits by spontaneous generation of the matter; the non-violent perpetuity If the admirable intellectual effort of Lamarck was almost unknown in his time, it is due from one side to the greatness of the giant step by which his contemporaries were advanced in half a century, and by another to the lack of his work a sufficient experimental basis.

Ernst Hæckel, History of natural creation

Much of his work was developed during the time he was a professor of invertebrates and refers to these. In 1801 he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, between 1802 and 1806 Memoires sur les fossiles des environs de París, and also in 1806 he published Discours d' ouverture du cours des animaux sans vertèbres.

In disgrace, one of his main works, his seven volumes Histoire naturalle des animaux sans vertèbres (1815-1822), he wrote largely dictating to one of his daughters, since in 1819 he went blind.

He spent the last part of his life ignored, in the care of his sisters, and died on December 18, 1829.

Work

To observe nature, to study its products, to seek the general and particular relationships that have been printed in their characters and, finally, to try to understand the order that makes it perish everywhere, as well as its functioning, its laws and the infinitely varied means that it employs to give rise to this order, it is, from my point of view, to get on the path of acquiring the only positive knowledge that is at our disposal, the only ones who can, at the most useful time,

Lamarck, Zoological philosophyIntroduction (first paragraph)

In Lamarck the capacity for work and anticipation of his time were exceptional. His main contributions to biology are the following:

• The concept of organization of living beings.
• The clear division of the organic world of inorganic.
• A revolutionary classification of animals according to their complexity.
• Formulation of the first theory of biological evolution.

Biology as a science

Lamarck claims for biology the need for its own philosophy:

We know that any science must have its philosophy and that only on that path makes real progress. Naturalists will vainly spend their time describing new species, catching new nuances, all the small peculiarities of their variations to enlarge the immense list of registered species [...] If the philosophy of science is neglected, its progress will not be real and the entire work will be imperfect

Philosophia Zoologica, pp. 69-70

Lamarck distinguishes between universe (set of matter) and nature (particular and constant order of things). This general distinction is parallel to that established between facts and relationships: for Lamarck, not only is the observation and study of facts and objects necessary, but also of their parts, the relationships between these and the relationships of objects with others and of all of them with their environment. The naturalist must always be attentive so that the laws that he postulates do not come from the imagination, but from empirical reality. His work must consist of observing and compiling the facts and, by way of successive inductions, abstracting with logical rigor the laws that explain them in the broadest and most consistent way.

Classification of living things

The Lamarckian classification is based on functional criteria. The central nervous system is the starting point, since from its centralization and progressive complexity the chain of beings can be built. Thus, Lamarck classifies animals into three large groups: those endowed with irritability (lower invertebrates), those that also possess "inner feeling" (higher invertebrates) and those that reveal intelligence and will (vertebrates).

Nature and origin of life

For Lamarck, life is a natural phenomenon consisting of a peculiar way of organizing matter. In this sense, he considers that living organisms are made up of the same elements and the same physical forces that make up inanimate matter; the animal and vegetable kingdoms only differ, therefore, from the mineral kingdom by the mode of internal organization of the same elements (HNASV).

From his concept of life, Lamarck lies in spontaneous generation, still under debate at that time, the mechanism of its origin: the movement of matter caused by the action of the forces of nature is capable of generating spontaneously to the simplest living organisms. From them, nature continues its trend towards a progressive increase in complexity as each organism is being replaced by others endowed with more organs and faculties. Also using spontaneous generation to explain the temporary coexistence of organisms of different degrees of complexity.

Lamarck's theory of evolution (lamarckism or transformism)

Lamarck formulated the first theory of evolution. He proposed that the great variety of organisms, which were accepted at the time to be static forms created by God, had evolved from simple forms; postulating that the protagonists of this evolution had been the organisms themselves due to their ability to adapt to the environment: changes in that environment generated new needs in the organisms, and these new needs would entail a modification of them that would be heritable.

For the formulation of his theory, he relied on the existence of remains of extinct intermediate forms. With his theory, he faced the general belief that all species had been created and had remained unchanged since their creation. He also confronted the influential Cuvier who justified the disappearance of species, not because they were intermediate forms between the original and the current ones, but because they were different forms of life, extinguished in the different geological cataclysms suffered by the Earth.

Lamarck's theory is a theory about the evolution of life, not about its origin, which, at the time, was accepted, arose spontaneously in its simplest forms. It would be 50 years later when Pasteur demonstrated that all organic fermentation and decomposition processes are due to the action of living organisms and that the growth of microorganisms in nutrient broths was not due to spontaneous generation. Lamarck had to outline his theory at a time when the state of the natural sciences was "chaotic", & # 34; formulated at a time when the distant possibility of founding them on evident facts could not even be glimpsed & # 3. 4;.

The chaotic state of knowledge around fossils, anatomy and taxonomy before evolutionism, the question: "How did no one ever think of evolutionism before?" becomes "How is it possible for someone to think about evolutionism?"

Leon Harris.

For Lamarck, the observation of nature, where organisms are perfectly adapted to the environment in which they develop, led to the following alternative: or organisms were created with all the adaptations to all existing environments on Earth and these environments had not changed since their origins, as was accepted then; or organisms adapted to these environments and consequently modified their structure as the environment changed, as he proposed.

Lamarck, while formulating the evolution of life, proposed a mechanism by which it would evolve. For Lamarck, nature would have acted by trial and error: "In relation to living bodies, Nature has proceeded by trial and error, and successively", and his theory could be summarized as: circumstances create the need, that need creates the habits, the habits produce the modifications as a result of the use or disuse of a certain organ and the means of Nature are in charge of fixing these modifications. He described this evolution as a consequence of six points:

1. All organized bodies (organisms) of the Earth have been produced by nature successively and after a huge succession of time.
2. In its constant march, Nature has begun, and it recommits even every day, to form the most simple organized bodies, and that it does not form directly more than these. That is, these first sketches of organisms are those that have been designated by the name of spontaneous generations.
3. Being formed the first sketches of the animal and plant have gradually developed the organs and with time have diversified.
4. The inherent reproduction faculty in each organism has resulted in the different modes of multiplication and regeneration of individuals. This is why progress has been preserved.
5. With the help of a sufficient time, of the circumstances, of the changes that have arisen on Earth, of the different habits that in new situations the organisms have had to maintain, the diversity of these arises.
6. The changes in its organization and its parts, which is called species, have been successively and insensitively formed. So the species has only a relative constancy in its state and cannot be as old as Nature.

He formulated two laws:

Thus, to get to know the true causes of so many different forms and so many different habits as the animals offer us, it is necessary to consider that the infinitely diversified circumstances, in which the beings of each race have been found, have produced for each of them new needs and changes in their habits necessarily. Recognized this truth, which no one can deny, it will be easy to perceive how new needs have been met and new habits acquired, if any attention is paid to the following two laws of Nature, which has always checked the observation:

First Law: in every animal that has not transcended the term of its development, the frequent and sustained use of any organ fortifies it gradually, giving it a power proportionate to the duration of this use, while the constant disuse of such organ weakens it and even makes it disappear.

Second Law: all that Nature did acquire or lose individuals by the influence of the circumstances in which their race has been placed for a long time, and consequently by the influence of the predominant employment of such organ, or by that of its disuse, Nature preserves it by the generation in the new individuals, so that the changes acquired are common to the two sexes, or to those that have produced these new individuals.

Lamarck, Zoological philosophy. pp. 175-176.

Lamarck, with these laws, maintained that if a “race” (that is, a group of organisms) was subjected to the same environmental conditions and these conditions lasted for a long time, they would transform by adapting to that environment. As a mechanism, he proposed that the transformations that organisms undergo in life, subjected to different environments, would be fixed in their offspring over time, what we know today as horizontal transference.

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He warned that this process is so slow that from our capacity of observation it would go unnoticed. According to these laws, changes are produced not in the individual but in the population (not in one or more individuals, but in the group of individuals) and they are not immediate changes but rather would be established over a long process.

variations in circumstances for living beings, and especially for animals, produce changes in their needs, in their habits and in the way they exist, and if these changes result in modifications or developments in the organs or in the form of their parts, it must be induced that insensitively every living body any must vary in its forms or its external characters, although such variations would not become sensitive more than after a considerable time. [...] In every place where beings can inhabit, the circumstances that establish in it an order of things remain long being the same and do not actually change more than with such great slowness, that man cannot directly warn them. He is obliged to consult the monuments to recognize that in each of those places the order of things established has not always been the same. The breeds of animals living in each of them must keep their habits in it for a long time. Hence for us the apparent constancy of the races we call species, a constancy that led to the birth of the idea that the races are as old as Nature.

Lamarck, Zoological philosophy, pp. 69, 174.

Lamarck's ideas were not taken into account in his time, although his book Zoological Philosophy, where he expressed his theory, circulated in France and also in England, a work to which Lamarck himself had access Darwin.

It was after the theory of natural selection was formulated when evolutionists took up Lamarck's thought trying to fill the gap that natural selection left by not explaining the source of the variability on which such selection acted. Darwin himself, while reviling Lamarck's theory, tried to fill that gap by postulating "pangenesis", a Lamarkian horizontal transfer mechanism. And it would be at the beginning of the century XX when Weismann refuted it with the formulation known as the “Weismann barrier” by which it was considered that if there were two lines, the germinal and the somatic, there would be no possibility of transfer of information between each other. Misunderstanding Lamarck, he developed an experiment that supposedly disproved his theory: he docked successive generations of mice to show that his offspring were not born with docked tails.

Since then, Lamarckism has been simplified with arguments that come to caricature it: «In towns where the blacksmith inherits the trade from his father, his grandfather and his grandfather, it was thought that he also inherited well-developed muscles. he only inherited them but developed them further with exercise, and passed these improvements on to his son." In life, Lamarck would have to defend himself against similar arguments:

However, it is still objected that all that is seen is announced, relatively to the state of the living bodies, an unalterable record in the preservation of its form, and it is thought that all the animals whose memory has transmitted to us the story always highlight the same and have not lost or acquired anything in the perfecting of their organs and in the form of their parts. [...]

"You cannot at least," the authors say, contain the flights of the imagination, when it is still preserved with its minor bones, its minor hairs and its minor details such an animal that previously had in Tobas or in Menfis priests and altars. But without straying from all the ideas that give birth to such approximations, let them expose that these animals are perfectly similar to the present ones." (Anales of the Museum of Natural History[... ]

There is, therefore, nothing in the observation that has just been quoted that is contrary to the considerations I have put on this matter, nor to prove that the animals in question have existed at all times in Nature, for it only proves that they lived in Egypt two or three thousand years ago. And every man who possesses the habit of reflecting and observing at the same time the documents of the enormous antiquity shown by Nature, appreciates in his true value the insignificant figure of three thousand years regarding geological times.

Lamarck, Zoological philosophy.

During the XX century, Lamarckism has been defended by different evolutionists, and the so-called “Baldwin effect” (enunciated by James Marck Baldwin and C. Loyd Morgan at the end of the XIX century), a sweetened version of Lamarckism according to which sustained habits of the species, by natural selection, would be fixed in heredity, it is maintained as plausible to solve some difficulties of neo-Darwinism.

Advanced in the XX century, the “Weismann barrier” has proved to be passable, without being able to prove that the acquired characters were not they can become heritable. Horizontal transfer has been demonstrated in cases, and viruses, with their capacity for genetic exchange, are seen as the possible actors in such transfers. Also, in symbiosis, the existence of genetic transfer has been demonstrated, and in its degree of maximum integration, symbiogenesis, has demonstrated the hatching of new individualities, chimeras that integrate their symbionts. The transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, described in serial endosymbiosis, was a consequence of these symbiogenetic processes; although Mayr and Maynard Smith in the 90s believed that these processes have nothing to do with Lamarckism. Gould (1977) would say: "I doubt that Lamarckism will ever again experience a resurgence as a viable theory of evolution."

Today, the majority of the scientific community considers the neo-Darwinian paradigm satisfactory to explain biological evolution, not considering Lamarckism valid. However, Lynn Margulis, among others, considers that "a main suggestion for the new century in biology is that the maligned slogan of Lamarckism, "the inheritance of acquired characters" it must not yet be abandoned: it must only be carefully refined."

Some posts

• Flore Françoise: Ou Description Succincte De Toutes Les Plantes Qui croissent naturellement En France; Disposée selon une nouvelle méthode d'Analyse, et à laquelle on a joint la citation de leurs vertus les moins équivoques en Médicine, et de leur utilité dans les Arts, Paris, 1778
• Tableau Encyclopédique et Methodiquepart of Encyclopédie Méthodique. Volume 1 to 3 of a total of 8 vv., Paris, 1783-1808. (Available online at: [1])
• Mémoires de physique et d'histoire naturelle, établis sur des bâses de raisonnement indépendantes de toute théorie; avec l'exposition de nouvelles considérations sur la cause générale des dissolutions; sur la matière du feu; sur la couleur des corpsos; sur la formations, Paris, 1797
• 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 rapports naturels et de leur organisation, et suivant l'arrangement établi dans Naturelle, parmi leurs dépouilles conservées, Paris,1801
• Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivans: et particulièrement sur son origine...: précédé du discours d'ouverture du cours de zoologie donné dans le Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, l'an X de la RépubliqueParis, 1802. Ed. esp.: Research on the organization of living bodies, Oviedo, KRK, 2016
• Mémoires sur les fossiles des environs de Paris comprenant la détermination des espèces qui appartiennent aux animaux marins sans vertèbres, et dont la plupart sont figurés dans la collection des vélins du Muséum, Paris, 1802
• Hydrogéologie ou recherches sur l'influence qu’ont les eaux sur la surface du globe terres; sur les causes de l'existence du bassin des mers, de son déplacement et de son transport successif sur les différens points de la surface de ce globe; enfin sur les changemens que les corps vivans exercent sur la nature et l’état, Paris, 1802
• Philosophie zoologique, ou, Exposition des considérations relative à l'histoire naturelle des animaux (translated to German Arnold Lang: Jena 1876, Paris, 1809. **Reprinted in Zoologische PhilosophieFráncfort del Meno, Harri Deutsch. 2002 (Ostwalds Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften, v. 277/279)
• Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres présentant les caractères généraux et particuliers de ces animaux, leur distribution, leurs genres, et la citation des principales espèces qui s'y rapportent: précédée d'une introduction offrant la détermination des caractères essentiels de l'animal, sa distinctions. Paris 1815-1822
• Système Analytique des Connaissances Positives de l'Homme. Ed. of the author, Paris 1820
• Alfred Giard (ed.) Discours d’ouverture [des cours de zoologie donnés dans le Muséum d'histoire naturelle, an VIII, an X, an XI et 1806]]. Paris 1907.

Eponymy

Bee species

• Apis mellifera lamarckii
• Cyaneia lamarckii

Marine species

Gender

• (Poaceae) Lamarckia Moench
• (Solanaceae) Lamarckia Vahl

Species (116 IPNI records)

• (Rosaceae) Amelanchier lamarckii F.G.Schroed.
• (Scrophulariaceae) Digitalis lamarckii Ivanina
• (Ranunculaceae) Aconitum lamarckii Rchb. ex Spreng.

Astronomy

• The lunar crater Lamarck carries this name in his memory.
• The asteroid (7296) Lamarck also commemorates its name.

Used bibliography

• Corsi, Pietro (2001). Lamarck. Genèse et enjeux du transformisme. 1770-1830Ed. CNRS: 434 pp. ISBN 2-271-05701-9
• Dawkins, Richard (1986). The Ciego WatcherTrad. Manuel Arroyo Fernández, Editorial Labor S. A. 1989
• Dennett, Daniel (1999). Darwin's dangerous idea. Evolution and meanings of life, Trad.: Cristóbal Pera Blanco-Morales, Circle of Readers /Galaxia Gutenberg.
• Gould, Stephen Jay (1980). THE PANDA’S THUMB, The thumb of the pandaTrad. ANTONIO RESINES, Review by JOANDOMENEC ROS, Hermann Blume, Madrid 1983.
• Gould, Stephen Jay (1977). From Darwin. Reflections on Natural HistoryEver since Darwin. Reflections in Natural History, Trad. Antonio Resines, (1983), Hermann Blume Editions.
• Harris, Leon (1981). Evolution. Genesis and Revelations, Trad: Antonio Resines, 1985, Hermann Blume Editions.
• Lamarck, Jean Baptiste (1809). Philosophie zoologique. Prologue of Ernesto Hæckel[In Spanish: Zoological philosophy. F. Sempere and Publishing Company (F. Sempere and V. Blasco Ibáñez). Col. Philosophical and social library. 262 pp. Valencia, ca.1910. (Facsimilar edition of Editorial Alta Fulla - World of Science. Barcelona, 1986 ISBN 84-86556-08-2)
• Ho, Mae-Wan (1988). Genetic engineering, Trad.: José Ángel Álvarez, Editorial Gedisa SA 2001
• Margulis, Lynn (2002). Symbiotic Planet. A new view on evolution. Victoria Laporta Gonzalo (trad.). Madrid: Editorial Debate.
• Mayr, Ernst (1995). This is Biology, This is biology 1998Trad. Juan Manuel Ibeas, Editorial Debate, S.A.
• André Pichot (1997). Histoire de la notion de vie. Ed. Gallimard, coll. « TEL »: 980 pp. ISBN 2-07-073136-7, chap. 7 «Lamarck et la biologie»
• Pinker, Steven (1997). How the mind works, How the Mind WorksTrad. Ferran Meler-Orti, Editions Destination S. A. 2001
• Popper, Karl R. (1972). Objetive knowledge, Objective knowledge. An evolutionary approach, Trad.: Carlos Solís Santos, Ed. Tecnos S. A. 1974
• Sandin, Maximum. Thinking of Evolution, Thinking of Life, 2006, Crimental Editions S. L. ISBN 84-935141-0-1