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Philosophie Zoologique - 200: Lamarck in Retrospect ARTICLE PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE - 200: LAMARCK IN RETROSPECT KAMALES KUMAR MISRA* J. B. Lamarck is considered as one of the renowned evolutionists. He was the first scientist to explain evolution as a vertical phenomenon and considered man as the end product of evolution. Lamarck, originally a believer in constant world, became an evolutionist after studying the fossil and recent mollusks of France in the year 1799. Lamarck published his book Philosophie Zoologique in 1809 and is being misunderstood till today. It is time to evaluate Lamarckian perception from present day concepts of evolution. The paper depicts his personal life, his emergence as an evolutionist, his contribution on evolution, and post-Lamarckian discussions. Moreover, Lamarckism is analyzed from the angle of various inheritance systems. The idea of Lamarck is also addressed in the light of Baldwin effect, genetic assimilation, somatic selection hypothesis, internal selection, gene duplication, and evolutionary novelties. Lastly, an evolutionary model is proposed to elucidate Lamarckian concept based on the contributions on modern evolutionary modalities. Introduction of his father Philippe Jacques de Monet de La Marck (died in 1759) and mother Marie-Françoise de Fontaines de escent of complex organisms with modifications Chuignolles. is the central theme of evolutionary theory which Dmoves with the time. Evolutionary thoughts are His family had with a centuries-old tradition of military constantly enriching our knowledge time and again. The service in the French army. Lamarck’s eldest brother was central purpose of evolutionary biology is to provide a killed in combat at the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, and two rational explanation for the gradual appearance of other brothers were still in service when Lamarck was in extraordinary complex and intricate organization of all kinds his teenage years. He was admitted to the Jesuit seminary of living forms. A long argument continues to address the at Amiens around 1750s. After the death of his father, mechanism of evolution. As Mayr1 viewed that a true Lamarck bought himself a horse, and rode across the theory of evolution must postulate a gradual transformation country to join the French army, which was in Germany in of one species into another. Analysis of the history of the summer of 1761. Lamarck showed great physical evolutionary theories reveals that J. B. Lamarck should be courage on the battlefield in the Pomeranian War with considered as a true “First Evolutionist”. Prussia, and he was even nominated for the lieutenancy. Lamarck’s company was left exposed to the direct artillery Background of a Naturalist fire of their enemies, and was quickly reduced to just fourteen men and no officers left. One of the men Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de suggested that the puny, seventeen year-old volunteer Lamarck was born on August 1, 1744, in the village of should assume command and order a withdrawal from the Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardie, in the north of France in an field; but although Lamarck accepted command, he insisted impoverished aristocratic family. He was the eleventh child they remain where they had been posted until relieved. * Department of Zoology, Bethune College, 181 Bidhan When their colonel reached the remains of their company, Sarani, Kolkata 70 006, Email: [email protected] this display of courage and loyalty impressed him so much 198 SCIENCE AND CULTURE, MAY-JUNE, 2011 that Lamarck was promoted to officer on the spot. 26, 1794, Lamarck was appointed to serve as secretary of However, when one of his comrades playfully lifted him the assembly of professors for the museum for a period of by the head, he sustained an inflammation in the lymphatic one year. glands of the neck, and he was sent to Paris to receive treatment. He underwent a complicated operation, and Personal Life continued his treatment for a year. He was awarded a Lamarck married and widowed four times. On August commission and settled at his post in Monaco. 8, 1778, he married Marie Anne Rosalie Delaporte. After working as a bank clerk in Paris for a while, Lamarck’s first son, André, was born on April 22, 1781, Lamarck began to study medicine and botany and in and he made colleague André Thouin the child’s godfather. Monaco he encountered Traité des plantes usuelles, a On January 7, 1786, his second son, Antoine, was born, botany book written by James Francis Chomel. Lamarck and Lamarck chose Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Bernard was getting a reduced pension of 400 franc and he wanted de Jussieu’s nephew, as the boy’s godfather. On April 21 to pursue a profession. He studied medicine for four years, of the following year, Charles Rene, Lamarck’s third son, but gave it up under his elder brother’s persuasion. He was born. René Louiche Desfontaines, a professor of was interested in botany, especially after his visits to the botany at the Royal Garden, was the boy’s godfather, and Jardin du Roi, and he became a student under Bernard de Lamarck’s elder sister, Marie Charlotte Pelagie De Monet Jussieu, a notable French naturalist. Under Jussieu, Lamarck was the godmother. Lamarck’s wife gave birth to three spent ten years studying French flora. In 1778, he more children before dying on September 27, 1792. The published some of his observations and results in a three- following year on October 9, he married Charlotte Reverdy, volume work, entitled Flore française. The book received who was thirty years his junior. In 1797, his second wife great acclaim, in part thanks to the support of Buffon. Charlotte died, and he married Julie Mallet the following Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon mentored Lamarck year; she died in 1819. He is rumored to have married and helped him in getting membership to the French (and been widowed) a fourth time, but no documentary Academy of Sciences in 1779 and a commission as a Royal evidence exists to support this. The two daughters who Botanist in 1781 at the royal botanical garden, the Jardin attended his deathbed were left penniless at his death; des Plantes, which was not only a botanical garden but a one surviving son was deaf and incapable and another center for medical education and biological research. The was insane. Only one son, Auguste, was financially job helped him to travel to foreign botanical gardens and successful as an engineer, and only he went on to marry and have children himself. museums. In 1788, Buffon’s successor at the position of Intendant of the Royal Garden, Charles-Claude Flahaut de Pre-Lamarckian Thoughts la Billaderie, comte d’Angiviller, created a position for Lamarck, with a yearly salary of 1,000 francs, as the keeper Pre-Lamarckian heritage have no distinct bearings on of the herbarium of the Royal Garden. In his two years of evolutionary thinking of man. Impact of religion eclipsed travel, Lamarck collected rare plants that were not available evolutionary thinking, because there was a contradiction in the Royal Garden, and also other objects of natural between God and evolution. Researches on physics, history, such as minerals and ores, that were not found in cosmology, geology, etc. dominated the scientific fields. French museums. Aside from a stint as tutor to Buffon’s There was no conceptual proposition in biological son during a tour of Europe in 1781, Lamarck continued sciences. Buffon and Linnaeus were two great naturalists as an underpaid assistant at the Jardin du Roi, living in in eighteenth century. The seventeenth and eighteenth poverty. In 1793, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette went centuries experienced an almost total revolution in man’s to the guillotine, the old Jardin des Plantes was reorganized concept of nature. This was the ‘age of reason’. Peoples as the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle (National tried to understand reasons behind everything. Discoveries Museum of Natural History), which was to be run by in various fields, especially on physical laws, infinity of twelve professors in twelve different scientific fields. time and space, cosmological evolution, discredited the Lamarck, who had called for this reorganization, was Bible as a source of scientific explanation. Further, appointed a professor of the natural history of insects discoveries in the biological sciences too posed serious and worms (that is, of all invertebrates), a subject he knew challenges to the creationist-interventionist interpretation, nothing about. Lamarck received the official title of which include fossil evidence, heterogeneity of flora and “Professeur d’Histoire naturelle des Insectes et des Vers”, fauna, propositions of Linnaean hierarchy, adaptability of with a salary of nearly 2,500 francs per year. On September organisms, etc. VOL. 77, NOS. 5–6 199 Two major problems demanded scientific explanation recognised two entirely separate lineages of animals, one during pre-Lamarckian period 1. leading from the infusorians to the polyps and radiarians, the other one, containing the majority of animals, arising 1. The origin of diversity with seemingly orderly 5 arrangement in a natural system. from worms (Fig. 1). Later, Lamarck recognised an even much larger number of separate lineages 6. 2. Superb adaptation of all organisms to each other Infusorians, and to their surroundings. Worms Polyps, More and more problems were identified about the Radiarians discontinuity between species and higher categories, Annelids, extinction and survival of species, existence of vestigial Cirrhipedes, Insects, Molluscs Arachnids, organs and the role of God. Now, creationism became an Fishes, Crustaceans insignificant solution to the scientific community. Reptiles Emergence of an Evolutionist Birds In his initial days, Lamarck was originally an Amphibian Mammals Monotremes essentialist. He used to belief the concept of constant world. Originally he was not a thinker on evolution although Cetacean the term was in the air. In his initial discourse (for the Mammals year 1799) as a professor of the ‘inferior animals’ (later Ungulate known as ‘invertebrates’, the term coined by Lamarck Mammals Unguiculate himself), Lamarck believed that species are unchanging and Mammals there is no possibility of evolution.
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