Why Lamarck Did Not Discover the Principle of Natural Selection

Why Lamarck did not Discover the Principle of Natural Selection

MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE Department of Dance Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122

In commenting on the work of Georges Buffon, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, and Charles Darwin, the historian J. S. Wilkie suggested that one of these scientists could be "observed in the act of not discovering the principle of natural selection. ''1 Although it was actually Buffon who came under the author's sleuthful gaze in this particular instance, his essay leaves no doubt that Lamarck too could have been caught in the act. Indeed he was, and has been since by other historians, though perhaps not so red-handedly. These examples illustrate the point:

Lamarck's problem was not limited to a lack of evidence in support of the idea of organic change. He was also unable to provide a satisfactory mechanism to account for the facts of adaptation... Natural selection, the key to explaining adaptation that was discovered by Darwin and Wallace, never occurred to Lamarck. 2

Organic evolution implies that animate nature is in a constant state of change, but Lamarck was unwilling to push his concept to its logical extreme, a

Instead of looking for such a factor [adaptation], I_amarck talked vaguely of "the cause which tends to the complication of organiza- tion," thus introducing an idea inconsistent with his materialistic outlook. 4

One more instance in which Lamarck made the wrong guess! s

1. J. S. Wilkie, "Buffon, Lamarck and Darwin: The Originality of Darwin's Theory of Evolution," in Darwin "s Biological Work, ed. Peter Robert Bell (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 278. 2. Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr,, The Spirit of System (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 212. 3. Frank N_ Egerton, "Studies of Animal Populations from Lamarck to Darwin," J. Hist. Biol., 1 (1968), 228. 4. John C. Greene, The Death of Adam (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1959), p. 166. 5. Ernst Mayr, "Lamarck Revisited," J. Hist. Biol., 5 (1972), 72.

Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1982), pp. 443-465. 0022-5010/82/0153/0443 $02.30_ Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A_ MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE

Historians of science generally concur that Lamarck did not discover the principle of natural selection, but they appear at times to believe that he let the principle slip through his fingers. The impression is clearly, "If only Lamarck had .... then he would have... " The belief that he muffed it, so to speak, is apparent in a variety of contexts, but perhaps nowhere is it more clearly illustrated than in the following passage. The author is considering Lamarck's rightful, but alas, short- sighted, emphasis upon the environment with respect to adaptation: Here was an opportunity for Lamarck, the experienced zoologist, to test his theory. For instance, when he cites the sloth (Bradypus) as an animal which, owing to its arboreal locomotion, leaf-eating habits, and existence in the hot tropics, has acquired all sorts of adaptations, including extreme slowness of movement, he should have asked himself whether other equally tropical and arboreal mammals with similar food habits, such as the leaf-eating monkeys, had become slothlike. He would have found out that they acquired entirely different adaptations and have remained quick and lively. 6 The purpose of the present paper is, first, to question whether the historical view of Lamarck implicit in the above citations, and in the title of this essay as well, is tenable or whether it is based on a pastiche of preconceptions, assumptions, nationalistic traditions, habit, and so on. It is, second, to suggest an alternative view through a consideration of Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world; that is, through an examination of what that scheme did and did not allow. The initial task, then, is to uncover the rationale underlying the common historical conception of Lamarck as a man who missed his opportunity, and to point out its liabilities and the difficult issues it raises. To begin with, the conception was founded on the belief that certain ideas were "in the air" during Lamarck's lifetime and would, if correctly assembled, have yielded the principle of natural selection. Consider these two statements, by Loren Eiseley and Albert Vandel: We have now come, at the midpoint of the eighteenth century, into a world where several ideas are beginning to emerge without quite coalescing into an organized whole - the theory which will unite them is still to be manufactured, 7 L'id6e d'6volution 6tait clans Pair depuis la fin du XVIII e si~cle, s 6. Ibid., p. 79. 7. Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1961),p. 35. 8. Albert Vandel, "Lamarck et Darwin," Rev. Hist. Sci.. 13 (1960), 63.

444 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

A belief in airborne ideas encourages a particular standard of judg- ment in appraising the work of Lamarck and of course of other natu- ralists of the period as well; namely, their grasp and use of the readily available airborne ingredients to fashion a theory of evolution, and their distance from what might be acknowledged as an acceptable theory. Eiseley notes, for instance, that "Buffon managed, albeit in a somewhat scattered fashion, at least to mention every significant ingredient which was to be incorporated into Darwin's great synthesis of 1859." Eiseley goes on to say, however, that Buffon "did not.., quite manage to put these factors together. ''9 Vandel tells us, on the other hand, that the idea of evolution which was in the air, "devait ~tre clairement expos6e par Lamarck, tout d'abord dans les ouvertures de ses cours de zoologie, puis dans la Philosophie zoologique." 10 Now one of the problems with espousing the notion of airborne ideas is quite precisely illustrated by these contrasting conceptions of their nature: in what sense, one may ask, were evolutionary ideas in the eighteenth-century air? Were they there like so many flies in a swarm, ready to be picked off; or were they more like pollen dust, rather diffused and impalpably present? The notion of muffing it obviously hangs in the conceptual balance. One can hardly muff something that is not either near at hand or already in hand. A more basic problem lies in considering the very existence of airborne ideas: were evolutionary ideas in the air all along for Lamarck, or were they there only because we recognize them from our more privileged-because-distant vantage point? A twentieth-century vantage point, after all, allows us to take in the whole range of eighteenth to nineteenth-century biological speculations, irrespective of national or linguistic differences. It also allows us to line up and assay all those speculations with respect to an ultimate, half-century-later standard; we know where all those speculations were headed. In effect, it would seem crucial to adjudge whether evolutionary ideas were in the air for Lamarck, or whether they were there only in retrospect. Not only must we determine in just what sense, if any, ideas were in the air, and for whom they were in the air, but also - if Eiseley's and Vandel's statements are to be taken as prototypic - we must wrestle with the adequacy of particular versions of evolutionary theory. In other words, given evolutionary airborne ideas, is any assemblage of them a theory of evolution, or is there only a preferred theory? Does a

9. Eiseley,Darwin's Century, p. 39. 10. Vandel, "Lamarck et Darwin," p. 63.

445 MAXINE SHEETS4OHNSTONE more or less diverse assemblage of the ingredients constitute a theory of evolution, as Vandel would seem to suggest, or must a much more tightly unified theory be made from the ingredients, as Eiseley seems to suggest? Just as one's answer to the earlier set of questions is complicated by questions of apparency, discovery, hindsight, and the like, so one's answer to the present question is complicated by one's own preferences and readings of history. Ignoring the problems and complications posed by airborne ideas and proceeding simply (if naively) on the assumption that Lamarck was aware of all of the necessary ingredients of a bona fide theory of evolution, one might understandably be led to wonder how it was that Lamarck did not construct the "great synthesis." Airborne ideas, after all, supply only the opportunity for the synthesis; they do not reveal anything about how or why Lamarck did not come to formulate it. If we are to probe the rationale underlying the conception of Lamarck as a man who missed his opportunity, we shall have to consider not only the notion of airborne ideas but typical historical characterizations of Lamarck as well. To ask why it is that Lamarck did not seize upon the principle of natural selection and thus ultimately upon the currently accepted theory of evolution is to ask in a quite specific sense why Lamarck failed. It implies that Lamarck sought something, and that he was unsuccessful in attaining it. Since failure can only be predicated of those who try, Lamarck's lack of appreciation of the principle of natural selection can be adjudged a failure only if he is viewed as having tried somehow to arrive at it. The question of whether Lamarck was in fact aiming in that direction is of critical importance. H But that very question has been skirted altogether; if we assume eighteenth and nineteenth-century evolutionary airborne ideas and the subsequent Darwinian synthesis, it appears that Lamarck must have been headed in one direction and one direction only. One might say that according to twentieth-century French historians there is no doubt that Lamarck's journey ended in triumph, while according to Anglo-Saxon historians there is no doubt that Lamarck fell short of the mark. For the French historian the idea of Lamarck as a failure is out of the question. By the same token, for the Anglo-Saxon

11. For a negative view see, for example, M. J. S. Hodge, "Lamarck's Science of Living Bodies," Brit. J_ Hist. Sci., 5 (1971), 323-352; and M. Jean-Pierre Faure, "Le Cas Lamaxck," Cahiers Laiques, 148 (1975), 90-112.

446 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection historian an aura of failure hangs over Lamarck like a dark cloud, which no amount of history making on his part can dispel. 12 We see Lamarck "fumbling over the problem of extinction" 13 or "fumbling uncertainly with the question of time and fossils"; ~4 or we find that "it is remarkable how little Lamarck says on the multiplication of species, considering how many years he had been working on groups of closely related species and their distribution"; ts or we might note that "this tendency to suppose that it must be relatively easy for any intelligent man to understand the intentions of nature appears again in Lamarck's slips into a teleology which really is vicious, and which can be only partly excused as a metaphor"; 16 or we might simply marvel in dumb- founded perplexity, "How could such extravagant theories arise in Lamarck's mind?" 17 In sum, Lamarck is chided or admonished in varying degrees for his purported shortcomings. So ingrained is the conception of Lamarck as a failure that even English-speaking writers who might be characterized as neutral if not sympathetic to Lamarck cast gloom about their subject:

Although he made this alteration in light of his last-minute change in the arrangement of his major groups, he failed to see exactly how extensive such revisions would have to be to make his treatment consistent. TM

Lamarck, despite his work as a systematist which led him to compare fossil and modern shells, failed to think of the history of life in the way that most biologists of the nineteenth century would think of it.t9

While at times it might seem a matter of no great critical importance,

12. As examples of Lamarck as a history maker, certainly his coining of the terms "biology" and "invertebrate" and his contribution to floral taxonomy could be mentioned. 13. Eiseley, Darwin's Century, p. 55. 14. Ibid., p. 64. 15. Mayr, "Lamaxck Revisited," p. 64. 16. Wilkie, "Buffon, Lamarck and Darwin," p. 299. 17. R. Hooykaas, "The Parallel between the History of the Earth and the History of the Animal World," Arch. ln ternat_ Hist. Sci., 38 (1957), 6. 18- David L. Hull, "The Metaphysics of Evolution," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 3 (1967), 331. 19. Burkhardt, Spirit, p. 87.

447 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE one might nevertheless wonder whether the specter of failure would cling as it does to Lamarck if, for example, the words, "did not" were substituted for "failed to" in the above citations. At other times it is quite clear that the power of language may not easily be brushed aside. Look, for example, at this appraisal of Lamarck's conception of species:

What is amazing ... is the fact that Lamarck was so totally blind to the drastic difference between the situation he described for geographically variable polytypic species and the sharp, bridgeless gaps of coexisting, sympatric species, such as the working naturalist encounters everywhere. These he never mentions nor does he any- where refer to the isolating mechanisms that help to maintain these gaps. Since an explanation of the origin of isolating mechanisms is the very essence of an explanation of the origin of species, it is obvious how distant Lamarck was from the solution of the problem of speciation ... It is further evident that he was simply not thinking in terms of species, and least of all of species as biological populations. 2°

One is spontaneously, on the verge of adding, "As well he should have!" So compelling is the "story," we forget that the language in which it is told is anachronistic; we find ourselves unwittingly accepting the idea that Lamarck was thoroughly familiar with such concepts as isolating mechanisms, polytypic species, and so on. Intentional or not, language may certainly be used to underscore the distance between Lamarck and Darwin or between Lamarck and twentieth-century biologists. In pointed contrast, it may also be used to underscore a proximity:

La vie est 6volution. Lamarck n'emploie pas le mot qui a pris depuis Darwin le sens d'une succession de formes h6t6rog~nes, discontinu6es et associ6es darts un unique mouvement. Mais l'id6e habite l'ensemble de la biologic lamarckienne, puisqu'eUe se d6gage de cette donn6e premiere: l'identit6 de la vie et de la dur6e. 21

It is a truism, of course, that words can beguile us this way or that, depending upon our penchant for seduction. They may certainly

20. Mayr, "Lamarck Revisited," pp. 67-68. 21_ Jean-Paul Aron, Lamarck: Philosophie zoologique (Paris: Librairie Scienti- fique et Technique, 1971), p. 21.

448 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection influence the conception of Lamarck as a failure - or as a hero, for that matter. M. J. Schiller's observation is noteworhy in this regard. Remarking on Anglo-Saxon writers who would interpret Lamarck in his own terms, Schiller notes, "Ils ne se rendent pas compte que partir de l'id6e d'6volution, c'est encore du darwinisme. ''22 In the same vein, M_ J. S. Hodge's caveat is worth noting - that when discussing Lamarck, "some deliberate forgetfulness is needed ''23 with regard to such concepts as geological succession, common ancestors, and the like. Whichever way the power of language is used to enhance a particular view of Lamarck, his placement within a certain lineage of biological speculation is apparent. Viewed as a failure, we see him as having aimed at a realization of the principle of natural selection and as having fallen short of his goal. His work, in this sense, is measured against a standard that came into existence after his death, which is to say that, given a belief in airborne ideas, Lamarck is a failure with respect to Darwin - and only with respect to Darwin. It becomes clear, then, that while a conception of Lamarck as a failure is tied on the one side to certain kinds of airborne ideas, it is tied on the other side to an acknowledgment of him as a precursor of Darwin. This continuity is essential to the conception of Lamarck as a failure. 24 Without it, there is no ground for comparison and thus no ground for proclaiming a loser or a victor. The question Michel Foucault raises concerning the identity of ideas across time are pertinent here. 2s For Foucault it is not merely a

22. M.J. Schiller, commentary in Faure's "Le Cas Lamarck," p. 112. 23. Hodge, "Lamarck's Science," p. 324. 24. Not only is this issue thorny, but its roots spread in several directions. From one point of view, it is a question of whether, like Linnaeus' and Lamarck's Nature, history too non facit saltus. From another point of view, it is a question of whether Larnarck is correctly regarded as a progenitor of Darwin. On the negative side see, for example, Charles .Coulston Gillispie's The Edge of Objectivity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960) and "Lamarck and Darwin in the History of Science" in Forerunners of Darwin: 1 745-1859, ed. Bentley Glass, Owsei Temkin, and William L. Straus, Jr. (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 265-291. From a third point of view, it is a question of what we might call period history as against ideational history and a further question of whether these two histories can ever meet. For opposing conceptions of the "better" or "more proper" history see, for example, Burkhardt, Spirit, pp. 11-12; and John C. Greene, "Reflections on the Progress of Darwin Studies," J. Hist. BioL. 8 (1975), 265. 25. Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 143.

449 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE question of the extent to which continuity may be called upon, but whether it can be called upon at all. While one's first response might be "But how else to render history?" the question is not so easily dismissed: if traditional history has its value, it also has its price. Whatever the resolution of the issue, however, to regard Lamarck as a precursor of Darwin is necessarily to assume continuity, and in the light of that continuity not only to look at history through the reverse end of the telescope but also to see the figure that is farther away only through the reflected light of the nearer one. If it were not for Darwin, the figure of Lamarck might not be illuminated at all. Seen in a Darwinian perspective, Lamarck is earmarked for the axiological equivalent of extinction, that is, failure. The characterization of Lamarck as a failure clearly hinges as much upon his being regarded a precursor of Darwin as it does upon a belief that evolutionary ideas were in the air of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In sum, historians of science can argue that Lamarck muffed it on the grounds that (a) the ideas were his for the grasping, and (b) someone appeared on the scene after him and grasped them. It is only in terms of both of these themes that historians can speak of Lamarck as a r&olutionnaire manqu& 26 Speculations on why Lamarck never seized upon the principle of natural selection range all the way from a discussion of his personal eccentricities to an analysis of his nonempirical procedures. As intrigu- ing and/or convincing as any of these speculations may be, they seem separately, severally, or all together strangely unsatisfying. The very fact that they constitute such a plethora of reasons suggests that, despite possible merit within a certain view of Lamarck, neither singly nor together do they touch upon the heart of the matter. And indeed, upon close inspection most of the reasons adduced may be seen to arise from a standard having nothing to do with the principle of natural selection itself. Instead, an extraneous standard of measurement has been called in - one enunciating the proper focus in scientific endeavors, for

26, See John C_ Greene's "The Kuhnian Paradigm and the Darwinian Revolu- tion in Natural History ," in Perspectives in the History of Science and Technology, ed. Duane H. D. Roller (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), p. 14; "It is fashionable nowadays to deny Lamarck any status as a precursor of Darwin, but we had best postpone this question of the influence of Lamaxck's r~volution manqu~e on Darwin's r~volution veritable until we deal with developments in Britain." Greene later treats the question of influence in an oblique and cursory manner and does not elucidate the grounds of his conception of Lamarck as - to embellish his choice phrase - a r~volutionnaire manqu&

450 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection example, or the proper method in scientific research, or the proper behavior for scientific success. What is lacking in such reasoning is a sense of inherent incompatibility between the possible conception and formulation of the principle of natural selection and any of the standards upon which jud~nents of Lamarck are rendered. Without a sense of necessary conflict, no elemental or conclusive reasons emerge to explain why the principle never occurred to Larnarck. Fundamentally, it is not because Lamarck did not do certain things or behave in certain ways that he did not conceive of the principle of natural selection, it is because he could not think certain concepts without first renouncing and overturning his world-view. It is only at the point where one sees an inherent incompatibility between Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world and the concepts engendered by the principle of natural selection that one comes to understand in a very fundamental way why Lamarck did not come to a realization of the principle. To apprehend Larnarck's Weltanschauung would permit us the necessary insights into his conceptual scheme; that is, we would see that it allowed certain themes and beliefs while disallowing others. Richard Burkhardt's statement, quoted early in this essay, might be used as a point of departure for arriving at that apprehension. If one accepts Burkhardt's view - that Lamarck was "unable to provide a satisfactory mechanism to account for the facts of adaptation" - one is likely to ask why this is so. If the answer is to be sought in terms of an inherent incompatibility, then it would have to be looked for within the context of Lamarck's world-view; something in his system of beliefs would prevent him from seriously entertaining the notion of natural selection. Burkhardt in the same passage goes on to say that "the balance of nature, as Lamarck saw it, was characterized by 'wise precautions' through which the continued existence of each species was assured. Within such a framework neither the idea of extinction nor the idea of change through natural selection was likely to be conceived. ''27 An inherent incompatibility is suggested, but remains unexamined. In a similar way, J. S. Wilkie almost twenty years earlier hinted at a fundamental conflict between Lamarck's optimistic view of the world and the rival idea of a tough struggle for survival: "To this optimism [the best of all possible words] and to the closely related expectation of good housekeeping in the affairs of nature must be attributed, I believe, the almost total absence of any reference, in

27. Burkhardt, Spirit, p. 212.

451 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE the works of Buffon and Lamarck, to the struggle for existence. ''2s Wilkie, like Burkhardt, did not go on to examine the disparity of the two world-views, to show how the one view of the world precluded a grasp of the other, nor did either historian explore incompatibility itself as a key to understanding the texture of Lamarck's "evolutionary" thought. Now it would seem that there are two basic approaches to an eluci- dation of the incompatibility between Lamarck's world-view and a view of the world in which the principle of natural selection could be conceived and formulated. To begin with Lamarck's world-view would require the adoption of a particular hermeneutical methodology allowing access to Lamarck's entire conceptual scheme of the world, and in such a way that it would not be distorted by a twentieth-century prism. Alternatively and more modestly, one might begin with the principle of natural selection, limiting oneself to a description of only those aspects of the principle which make it incompatible with Lamarck's world-view. While the first approach might yield a much richer picture, conveying subtle facets of Lamarck's conceptual scheme that are inimical to a conception of natural selection, the second approach should yield a synoptic view, a highlighting of the main factors creating the incompatibility. In the interest of obtaining this overall view, and in the interest of brevity, let us follow the second approach. We need first a very brief descriptive sketch of the principle of natural selection as formulated by Darwin. Noteworthy at the outset is the fact that Darwin's travels provided him a firsthand acquaintance with variations throughout the world. The second key feature is Dar- win's observation (spurred by his reading of Malthus) that "more individuals are produced than can possibly survive. ''29 Third is Darwin's acknowledgment that like begets like such that "any selected variety will tend to propogate its new and modified form." 3o We have, then, three main observational factors, two of which are anchored in Darwin's experiences on the Beagle as a naturalist and the third of which might come from any everyday experience of creatures in the natural world. By putting the first two together, one arrives at the notion of differing capacities for survival. By joining the third

28. Wilkie, "Buffon, Lamarck and Darwin," p. 270. 29. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1st ed., ed. J. W. Burrow (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 117. 30. Ibid., p. 68.

452 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection factor to the first two, one arrives at the notion of a differential trans- mission of characters. To quote Darwin himself, "If variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly charactedsed." 31 There is only one further factor necessary to a grasp of the essential features of Darwin's principle of natural selection, a factor that Darwin wrestled with and in a sense attempted to avoid affirming, yet a factor that was the cornerstone of the principle: "Only after one believes that chance variations emerge and are inherited ... does the commonplace and widely recognized 'struggle' become a genuine creative device." 32 (emphasis added) Darwin was much disturbed by the idea of chance happenings in nature, as is evident from The Origin of Species, as well as from his later correspondence. 33 His qualms or concerns notwithstanding, it is clear from his writings that he means much more by "chance" than that he is ignorant of the origin of variations: he needs precisely chance modifications - accidental and random events with or without known causes - in order for the principle of natural selection to be a viable explanation of descent with modification as he conceived it. The necessity of chance variations to the principle of natural selection is regularly noted by historians of evolutionary theory, yet nowhere are its manifold implications clearly spelled out. Eiseley comes very close to doing so when, after asking "What led Darwin to believe in the chance emergence of new characters?" he immediately continues, "This constitutes his major break with Lamarck and it is far more important than his recognition of the struggle for existence." 34 Nothing more is said about the "major break" and the insight is unfortunately aborted. Yet chance is one of two pivotal evolutionary factors inimical to Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world and therefore of crucial

31. Ibid., pp. 169-170. 32. Eiseley, "Darwin's Century," p. 202. 33_ See, for example, Darwin's letter to Charles Lyell dated August 21, 1861, in More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (London: 1903), vol. l, p. 194; his letter to Asa Gray dated May 22, 1860, in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (New York: 1898), vol. II, p. 105; and his letter to William Graham quoted by Robert M. Young in "Darwin's Metaphor: Does Nature Select?" The Monist, 55 (1971), 486. 34. Eiseley, "Darwin's Century," p. 202.

453 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE significance in showing why the principle of natural selection was never a conceptual possibility for Lamarck. In contrast to Darwin, who might best be characterized as an uncom- fortable believer, disbeliever, or agnostic, Lamarck was a deist. Wilkie notes that "in so far as lie was a Deist, Lamarck belonged to an earlier age than did Buffon, and we find his theorizing hampered by elements of eighteenth century, or even seventeenth century, thought which gave Buffon little trouble."35 One of Wilkie's major criticisms is that defects in Lamarck's theory were "due to the fact that the theory was everywhere infected with bad theology, ''~ - for example, God is infinite, yet deism supposes that man can see things from God's point of view. However significant Wilkie's criticism may be in terms of logical integrity, it does not do justice to the significance of Lamarck's deistic views with regard to his conceptual scheme of the world. Perhaps the most concise way of characterizing the impact of Lamarck's deistic beliefs upon his conception of the world as a naturalist is to say that he conceived the world to be a reasonable place and himself to be a reasoning man within it. Insofar as God had endowed man with the capacity to understand His universe, Lamarck was duti- fully practicing his faith in the Supreme Creator by exercising his rationality, specifically on behalf of knowledge about the world of living things. Yet not only how Lamarck saw things, but what he saw was influenced by his dedication to a God-given rationality. His epistemological beliefs were part and parcel of his rationalistic outlook upon the world. This is certainly not surprising, since rationalism constitutes in essence a particular epistemological view upon the world. Jacques Roger's description of the seventeenth-century Cartesian world is an apt description of the spirit and letter of the rationalism that was the guiding light of Lamarck's lVeltanschauung:

Le m6canisme de Descartes 6tait une affirmation de la rationalit6 et ... de la transparence du monde physique. Les lois du mouvement expliquaient tout, ou devaient permettre de tout comprendre, car elles 6taient accessibles ~ la raison humaine. Dans le d6tail des faits, ces lois g6n6rales aboutissaient ~ des mecaniques, semblables quant leur nature ~ celles que l'esprit humain peut imaginer, et que la main de l'homme peut construire. 37 35. Wilkie, "Buffon, Larnarck and Darwin," p. 289. 36. Ibid., p. 304. 37. Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie clans la pens~e francaise du XVII1 e si~cle (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963), p. 224.

454 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

The legacy of Descartes or of a Cartesian rationalism was not lost on Lamarck, but was everywhere clearly apparent: Lamarck was a rational man reading the rationality of the universe. Within his rationally ordered and rationally endowed world, not only was there no room for chance, but chance had not any possible access: a rationally ordered world does not admit random, fortuitous events. What one must do, then, in constructing such a world is to show that chance is nowhere to be found or that chance does not really exist. Lamarck did this by defusing it: in his hands, le hasard ~tait ~ventr& Two major passages epitomize Lamarck's thoughts about chance. One occurs in his Philosophie zoologique, the other in the Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vert~bres :

All the races of living bodies continue to exist in spite of their variations ._. What appears to be disorder, confusion, anomaly, incessantly passes again into the general order, and even contributes to it; everywhere and always the will of the Sublime Author of nature and of everything that exists is invariably carried out. aa

Puisque la nature est une puissance qui produit, renouvelle, change, d6place, enfin, compose et d6compose les diff6rents corps qui font partie de l'univers; on congoit qu'aucun changement, qu'aucune formation, qu'aucun d6placement ne s'op~re que conform6ment ses lois. Et, quoique les circonstances fassent quelquefois varier ses produits et celles des lois qui doivent ~tre employ6es, c'est encore, n6anmoins, par les lois de la nature que ces variations sont dirig6es. Ainsi, certaines irregularit6s dans ses actes, certaines monstruosit~s qui semblent contrarier sa marche ordinaire, les bouleversements dans l'ordre des objets physiques, en un mot, les suites trop souvent afflig6antes des passions de l'homme, sont cependant le produit de ses propres lois et des circonstances qui y ont donn6 lieu. Ne sait-on pas, d'ailleurs, que le mot de hasard n'exprime que notre ignorance des causes. 39

On the basis of the first quotation, it is clear that Lamarck considered variations of whatever order to be variations superimposed upon

38. Zoological Philosophy trans. Hugh Eliot (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1963), p. 55. 39. Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertbbres, 2nd ed. (Paris: J. B_ BaiUi~re, 1835), vol. 1, pp. 268-270.

455 MAXINE SHEETSdOHNSTONE the primordial sequence of life forms that flowed from the will of the Supreme Creator. Aberrant variations did not go any place, so to speak: they did not originate new lines of development but were reintegrated into the fundamental flow of life. In effect, they were swallowed up; they disappeared. Moreover, variations had a negative cast rather than a positive one: "All the races of living bodies continue to exist in spite of their variations," not because of them. Variations were intrusions into the otherwise perfect sequence of life forms, which flowed from the simple to the complex. Although this perfect sequence was interrupted, it was certainly not thrown off its course: the progression from simplicity to complexity was everywhere apparent in nature. Hence, although variations existed and although these variations appeared as disruptions in the Supreme Author's scheme of the world,they were not chance events in the sense of catching the Supreme Author off guard and/or of leading His otherwise perfectly ordered world astray. But neither were they chance events in the sense of being unexpected or random sources of change in "races of living bodies." Although Lamarck might speak of "disorder, confusion, anomaly," as if there were in fact such chance variations, he quickly returns them into the primordial order of the world; their accidental nature is defused. Chance is tamed, as it were, and even given a role (of undisclosed nature) in the Supreme Creator's world. Moreover, by affirming that appearances are deceiving and that the ordered universe of the Creator is the supreme reality - "what appears to be disorder ... [is] everywhere and always the will of the Sublime Author of nature" - Lamarck strips chance of any former power it might have had as a volatile and independent force in the world. When we turn to the second quotation, we see a further elaboration of Lamarck's conception of "disorder, confusion, anomaly." Whatever the magnitude of variation in the world, it is wholly the product of nature's laws. No longer is it necessary that accidental or random events be resumed into the ordered universe of the Creator in order to be stripped of their aleatory powers, although resumed they undoubtedly are. They are defused to begin with: each apparently random event is the result of the ubiquitous and binding laws of nature. Any variation therefore is not and has never been an aberrant force in the world. It need no longer be tamed, since it is -- and has been from the beginning - a docile subject of nature's laws. whatever effect circonstances might have upon creatures in the world in the form of variations, they are all regulated effects: there are no haphazard happenings in nature. Only

456 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection our ignorance could prevent us from appreciating this fact. In sum, chance is controlled by the laws of nature and is thereby empowered to do nothing. The inadmissibility of chance into Lamarck's world quite obviously colored his conception of variations. For example, as we have seen, variations had a negative cast: they had no creative role in nature as they did with Darwin, but were intrusions into an otherwise perfectly ordered progression. A chanceless world affected Lamarck's conception of variations in many less obvious ways as well, and it might be helpful to note a few further examples. In contrast to Darwin, Lamarck sees variations as effects, not as causes. Any deviation from the primordial variety and progression of living beings is seen as the end of some already established process of Nature, not as the beginning; it is something which has already been worked over by Nature, and not something on which Nature might work. Hence variations are not seen as a source of anything - the cause of an individual's survival or a species extinction, for example, or the development of a new lineage. On the contrary, they are seen as a result. Lamarck in consequence is led to explain the origin of variations. He traces them ultimately to the presence of subtle fluids and to the sentiment interieur. In the end, they are said to occur because the individual does something; but it does something - it needs and consequently it acts - only because it is imbued with life and because life produces creative responses in the individual creature, a° Life, in effect, takes the place of chance: it is life that supplies the "stuff" of which variations are made; it is life that is the creative force in the world. We might note further how balanced the contrast is between Lamarck's and Darwin's conception of variations. While Lamarck saw variations as effects and was consequently led to explain their cause, Darwin saw variations as causes and was consequently led to explain their effects. The impact of the difference in conceptual schemes is apparent in the line of inquiry and thought that each man pursued: the origin of life and the origin of species.

40. Although Alexander B. Adams' account of Lamarck's theory is simplified and rather superficial, the following statement is very much to the point: "Instead of grasping the importance of nature's program of changes and eliminations, he [Lamarck] left evolution up to the individual and the individual's will." Eternal Quest: The Story of the Great Naturalist (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969), pp. 134-135.

457 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE

Just as the conception of variations differs as one consequence of a world with or without chance, so also does the conception of Nature. Inevitably, the denial of chance can only lead Lamarck to a conception of Nature as personal in the sense of acting through each discrete individual.41 By virtue of the efforts of the individual creature to cope with changes in circonstances, the integrity of life is maintained: la marche de la Nature is accomplished. Not that Nature has a purpose or end to be fulfilled by the creature, 42 but that Nature works through each individual, and the forms which she fashions are living proof of her forces and her laws. In consequence, there is nothing about any creature that escapes her attention: she does not act impersonally, but ministers in minute detail to all creatures. The result of such a personal Nature is a world in which there are no degrees of adaptation: creatures are either adapted and fully so, or they do not exist and have never existed. Camille Limoges in fact makes the point explicitly that "il n'y a pas d'adaptation chez Lamarck. ''4a Insofar as there is no extinction of animals in Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world, Limoges' point is well taken. That there is an absolute accord between changes in circonstances and changes in animal forms is an absolute characteristic of life in a Lamarckian world. In a world without chance, a world wherein Nature is personalized, to live is to be adapted or it is never to have lived at all. That this personal view of Nature contrasts with Darwin's almost goes without saying. In the hands of an impersonal Nature, a creature's fate is clearly randomized rather than lawful; in the end arises the possibility of degrees of adaptation, of varying capabilities for survival, and ultimately, of certain characters and not others being represented in the next generation. The second key factor inimical to Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world is tightly related to this point, and indeed to all that has been said here of Lamarck's world-view and the ways in which it is incompatible with a formulation of the principle of natural selection.

41. The reverse of course might also be maintained, that a conception of Nature as personal can only lead to a denial of chance. The intention here, however, is not to date a sequence of conceptual events, but to illuminate the connec- tive tissue within Larnaxck's conceptual scheme of the world. 42. Lamaxck, Histoire natureUe, p_ 255: la nature est "un pouvoix qui n'a ni intention, ni but, ni volont6, [et qui] ne saurait faire autre chose que ce qu'il fait ." 43. Camille Limoges, La selection naturelle (Paris: Presses Universitaixes de France, 1970), p. 40.

458 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

This second factor has to do with the fact that Lamarck was not an observer of nature in the sense in which we understand that phrase today. Although historians have remarked in one way or another upon Lamarck's sedentary museum life, ~ none of them has focused upon the direct connection between firsthand observations of animals in nature, that is, in a living context, and a conception of natural selection. Without those firsthand experiences (or quite substantial vicarious substitutes), one would miss altogether two of the special observations requisite to a formulation of the principle of natural selection: namely, nonuniform variations in living species and the struggle among animals for life in an overpopulated world. Lest it be thought that Lamarck was not an observer of nature and did not perceive himself as such, let it be emphasized at once that he was and he did. It is just that his conception of what constituted an observer of nature differed radically from ours today: he considered that nature was rationally rather than empirically based. That difference notwithstanding, once Lamarck's epistemological beliefs are understood, it will be clear why the principle of natural selection would never occur to him. In his Zoological Philosophy Lamarck states:

To observe nature, to study her productions in their general and special relationships, and finally to endeavor to grasp the order which she everywhere introduces, as well as her progress, her laws, and the infinitely varied means which she uses to give effect to that order: these are in my opinion the methods of acquiring the only positive knowledge that is open to us. 4s (emphasis added)

Earlier he has entertained the question of what positive truths mankind can aspire to. His conclusion was that those positive truths include three kinds of knowledge:

les faits qu'il [l'homme] peut observer, et non les consdquences qu 'il

en tire; •.. l'existence de la nature qui lui pr6sente ces faits, ainsi que les matbriaux pour en obtenir; enfin, ... les lois qui r6gissent

44. See, for example, Burkhardt, Spirit, p. 212; Mayr, "Lamarck Revisited," p. 63; Egerton, "Studies of Animal Populations," p. 229; and Bernard Mantoy, Lamarck (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1968), pp. 79, 95-96. 45. Zoological Philosophy, p. 9.

459 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE

les mouvemens et les changemens de ses parties. Hors de la, tout est incertitude. 46 (emphasis added)

In specifying both what he takes as positive truths and the methods for arriving at them, Lamarck clearly showed that his rationalistic methods were equal to their epistemological task: there are facts, there are laws, there are the varied effects of movement, and there are methods for attaining positive truths in respect to each of these. The methods of acquiring knowledge are thus in absolute accord with the only positive truths accessible to mankind. Moreover, all three kinds of knowledge are simply different facets of knowledge about one single and all-embracing Nature:

Nature ... cannot be for us more than the totality of objects com- prising: (1) all existing physical bodies; (2) the general and special laws, which regulate the changes of state and position to which these bodies are liable; (3) lastly, the movement distributed at large among them, which is continually preserved or being renewed, has infinitely varied effects, and gives rise to that wonderful order of things which this totality embodies. 47

In sum, not only is there an absolute concordance between Lamarck's rationalistic methods and the positive truths they yield, but if Nature and knowledge about Nature are always coincident, then what Nature is and what we can know about her are one and the same. Clearly, Lamarck does not see his rationally based method as going beyond the bounds of observation. On the contrary, the empirical is wholly in the service of the rational and can only confirm its con- clusions. Thus, the limiting point for Lamarck is not at the edge of observation at all, not even his observation - but rather, at the edge of what mankind can know. Lamarck is thoroughly convinced that the method he has adopted does not exceed mankind's epistemological limits, and it is these limits which are of critical importance to him - precisely, one might add, because they are vouchsafed to him by the Sublime Author.

46. Philosophie zoologique (Weinheim: H. R. Engelmann, 1960), p. xxii. I have used the original French text in this instance, since the English equivalent contains an omission ("ainsi que les mat6riaux pour en obtenir") and an ambiguity not found in the French ("its parts"). 47. Zoological Philosophy, p. 183_

460 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

For Lamarck, then, the true naturalist is not limited to facts and facts alone: Nature's laws are as palpable as physical bodies, and equally palpable is the movement of fluids within those physical bodies. Lamarck envisioned the world as a place in which Nature's laws were transparent and in which the power of life in the form of organic movement was similarly transparent. His belief in that transparency and in the continuity of all knowledge allowed him at times to change epistemological horses midstream - at least by twentieth-century standards. For example, the effect of inner feeling that causes "horny matter" to be deposited in such a way that "solid protuberances" arise is, for Lamarck, on the same transparent epistemological footing as the effect of digging behavior that gives rise to claws. 4a Knowledge is not divided into such categories as the known and the unknown, the certain and the possible, the empirical and the rational. Knowledge is all of a piece, and the reason it is all of a piece is that Lamarck's epistemological beliefs are tied in with his deistic conception of the world: knowledge and Nature are one. The world is a rational place, and Lamarck is a rational man reading the rationality of the universe. Unlike Darwin, Lamarck does not separate or attempt to separate his theological views from his work as a naturalist. His epistemological beliefs are articles of rationalistic faith in a rational world, as are his theological beliefs that uphold the glory of a Supreme Creator whose works may be comprehended by man; together these beliefs constitute the framework of his "science," which is indeed a philosophical zoology. 49 Conceptually armed with his articles of faith, l_zmarck could hardly be expected to consider seriously any possible liabilities or shortcomings in his observations. Just as in his method he makes no distinction between the rational and the empirical, so in his factual observations he makes no distinction between living animals in nature, for example, and museum specimens. Given his rationalistic scheme of the world, such distinctions are patently unnecessary. They are essential only to someone for whom empirical ground rules of science first of all exist, and second, are binding irrespective of any theological system of beliefs. They are, in effect, necessary if one is to arrive at a conception of the principle of natural selection insofar as that principle is grounded not

48. Ibid., p. 122. 49. Rationalism is ultimately more a philosophical than a scientific outlook upon the world. Thus it is not surprising that Lamarck's biological speculations lean more toward the philosophical than the scientific.

461 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE m a rationally oriented theological vision of the world, but m two particular and unique observations arrived at only through a rigorously pursued empirical methodology. To arrive at the principle of natural selection it is vital that variations be seen within and against a living context. Even if we suppose that Lamarck saw variations m a particular species of animal among his museum specimens, he would not be likely to have "seen" that variations within a slender-legged species, for example, made some individuals more fleet than others, some more adept at escaping from attack, some quicker to reach a food source. Outside a living context, there would be no access to, and consequently no possibility of realizing, the behavioral consequences of structural differences, and therefore no basis for postulating degrees of adaptation. That Lamarck had no field experience accords well with his conception of variations as effects, and indeed with his rationalist's scheme of the world. It is obvious, however, that m-the-field experiences are vital to an appreciation of variations as causes and thus are ultimately necessary to a realization of individual differences. In brief, it is only through witnessing directly the diversity of life as it is lived that Lamarck might have begun to conceive of the principle of natural selection, and such witnessing was in essence foreign to the purview of his knowledge about Nature and life. s° In view of the fact that Lamarck did not distinguish between the study of living forms and dead ones, there is a certain irony insofar as the thrust of his work was "living bodies" and m good measure the conditions essential to the very existence of life. Such a critical view, however, is relevant only from a twentieth-century vantage point and axiology. What is and should be remarkable is that given Lamarck's epistemology - what to his mind could be known and known positively

- no distinction need be made between life as a living-present event and life as a once-lived-present event. If a rational mind holds the key to an understanding of a rational universe, then examples and firsthand evidence serve only to validate the rational vision; they do not originate it. Accordingly, direct experiences are not the criteria of positive truths; the criteria of positive truths are the limits of mankind's rationality, and it was these positive truths that Lamarck sought. What he valued and what he strove to attain - that larger synthetic vision of the world

50. I am not of course suggesting that merely by going out into the field Lamaxck (or anyone else) would be led to conceive the principle of natural selection. The point is that field experiences were not in any way central, or even congenial, to Lamaxck's working methodology.

462 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

-- were simply incompatible with the kind of itinerant study necessary to a conception and formulation of the principle of natural selection. Lamarck was not a working naturalist in the twentieth-century sense of that phrase (any more than he was an observer of nature in that same sense), and it is erroneous to think of him as such; sl he was not in the field, in the woods, or at the shore: he was in the museum and it was there that he forged his biologie. Similar remarks may be made in reference to the second requisite observation, that is, overpopulation leading to competition among animals: short of direct experiences of living animal forms, the notion of a struggle for life ensuing from overpopulation would not likely arise. There would be no reason for Lamarck to consider at length the effects of overpopulation or to question the extent or complexities of overpopulation in the first place, much less envision an all-pervasive struggle for life. Thus in the same way that he saw no living animals in nature and therefore did not have the opportunity to appreciate how slight variations could be of advantage or disadvantage, so he saw no effects of geography, for example, upon the population or distribution of animal species such that their potential for survival was enhanced or diminished. As with variations, it was a matter of seeing inert specimens rather than life at close range. It is thus not because Lamarck did not have the benefit of Malthus that he did not conceive of the principle of natural selection, it is because he did not have the benefit of any direct experiences of a wide array of living animals making their way in their everyday world. It would be erroneous, however, to regard Lamarck's lack of bio- geographical experience as a deficiency. It is not, after all, as if a few good field trips would have put him on the right path with respect to either variations or the struggle for survival. Within his conceptual scheme of the world preeminent value was not placed upon the observation of living animals, upon fact-gathering in nature. Preeminent value was placed upon rationality, and rationality could never discover nonuniform variations in nature or the competition among animals for survival following upon overpopulation. Rationality was incompatible

51. See reference in note 20 above, for example: "Larnarck was so totally blind to ... sympatric species, such as the working naturalist encounters everywhere." See also p. 64 of the same article: "This [an underlying essence] is particularly puzzling since, as a working taxonomist, he must have been aware of the phenomenon of individual variability." Given Lamarck's conception of variations and his rather sedentary life in the museum, the grounds for puzzlement fade completely.

463 MAXINE SHEETS-JOHNSTONE with the discovery of causal mechanisms in an empirical sense, and in this sense it was incompatible with a conceptualization and formulation of the principle of natural selection. Short of renouncing his theological- epistemological-rationalistic view of the world - that is, short of shattering the very bedrock of his conceptual scheme of the world - the idea of traveling to gather facts about living animals and the idea of using those facts alone to build a theory about animal life would simply not have entered Lamarck's mind. In sum, the principle of natural selection could not be conceived, much less formulated, by someone whose lCeltanschauung not only precluded chance but slighted empirically derived evidence as well. That Lamarck's deistic views influenced both his denial of chance and his espousal of rationalism appears obvious; but it would be a bit like trying to resolve the priority of "the chicken or the egg" to determine which belief was primary and which was derivative. The important point is not trying to rise above what must be conjecture, but appreciating both the integrity and the complex interfaces of Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world. Lamarck's biological speculations were clearly bound together by a mechanism that was pertinent and applicable throughout. To paraphrase Roger's remark about Descartes, "Le m6canisme de Lamarck 6tait une affirmation de la rationalit6." What is more, the statement may be taken literally. If by m~canisme is meant a satisfactory explanatory device, then rationality was Lamarck's m~canisrne par excellence. Rationality explained everything there was to know for Lamarck', and certainly it explains a good deal to us about Lamarck as we look in on his world. As for the complex interfaces of Lamarck's conceptual scheme of the world, it is apparent that Lamarck's denial of chance is intertwined with his deistic beliefs, his deistic beliefs with his rationalist's methodology, his rationalist's methodology with his epistemological principles, his epistemological principles with his denial of chance, his denial of chance with his rationalist's methodology, and so on and on. That other facets of Lamarck's Weltanschauung could be uncovered and interwoven with the above seems not only likely but certain. For the moment, however, we can lay to rest the question implicit in the title of this essay and perhaps too silence unconditionally its pejorative ring_ Short of abandoning his intricately structured Weltanschauung and forging one completely anew, Lamarck could neither be caught nor not be caught in the act of discovering a principle that had no place in his world.

464 Why Lamarck Did Not Discover Natural Selection

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dr. Joseph Brown for his comments on the content of this paper.

465