8.1 Evolution before Darwin_Lamarck

8.1 LAMARCK
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck
Tutor and travel companion of Buffon’s son
Essentialist at his early age
Uniformitarian
Not a vitalist
Not a teleologist (not recognizing any guidance of evolution toward a goal)
Not a dualist
Deism + Newtonian + Leibnizian:
Newtonian: a belief in the lawfulness of the universe and the conviction that all phenomena, not only of inanimate nature but also of "organized bodies," could be explained in terms of movements and forces acting upon matter
Leibnizian: a conviction of the perfect harmony of the universe, of plenitude and continuity
Synthesis of the ideas -> contradictions -> the adoption of evolutionism to resolve them
1799-1800 a “conversion” -> replace the previous world view by evolutionism
Lamarck’s New Paradigm
2 phenomena:
Animals show a graded series of “perfection”(complexity)
The amazing diversity of organisms, "that anything which it is possible to imagine has effectively taken place." (plenitude, diversity)
The actual transformation of species in a phyletic line: After a long succession of generations...individuals, originally belonging to one species, become at length transformed into a new species distinct from the first
Mollusk collection (fossil and recent mollusks) -> phyletic series
Extinct Species
ammonites, mastodons, mammoth
earth had been inhabited in former eras by creatures that had since become extinct, and not all of them at the same time
the concept of extinction was unacceptable for various ideological reasons:
was inconceivable to the Newtonians (natural theologians), everything in the universe is governed by laws.
violated the principle of plenitude because the extinction of a species would leave a void in the fullness of nature
4 explanations for the disappearance of fossil species (17th -18th centuries):
the extinct animals were killed by Noah’s Flood or some other great catastrophe (incompatible with Lamarck’s gradualism, lost species were aquatic)
the supposedly extinct species might be surviving in as yet unexplored portions of the globe
the extinction is the work of man (mammoth and mastodon)
the fossils in question belonged to species still existing, but which have changed since that time and have been converted into the similar species that we now actually find -> evolutionary change ->demonstrate the harmony of nature and the wisdom of the creator
the Achilles heel of natural theology:
It would be possible for a creator to design a perfect organism in a static world of short duration. However, how could species have remained perfectly adapted to their environment if this environment was constantly changing, and sometimes quite drastically?
a linear chain (the chain of being) -> a branching tree
The process of branching: 
seen by Lamarck as a process of adaptation
seen by Darwin as a process capable of producing diversity of species
Lamarck’s ideas on spontaneous generation and evolution:
lower organisms have originated by spontaneous generations
the processes of evolution provide for further development to greater perfection
the spontaneous generation of intestinal worms are the basis for the basis for the evolution of many higher organisms
Was Lamarck the First Consistent Evolutionist?
A true theory of evolution must postulate a gradual transformation of one species into another and ad infinitum. (Anti-essentialism)
static world picture -> dynamic one
Lamarck’s Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change
2 separate causes as responsible for evolutionary change:
An endowment which provides for the acquisition of ever greater complexity. <- An innate potential of animal life <- derived “from powers conferred by the ‘supreme author of all things’” <- a law of nature
A capacity to react to special conditions in the environment. <- animals must be in perfect harmony with their environment <- Not a single linear sequence toward perfection
The need to respond to special circumstances will release the following chain of events:
every considerable and continuing change in the circumstances brings about a real change in their needs
every change in the needs of animals necessitates an adjustment in their behavior to satisfy the new needs and different habits
requires of the animal that it either use certain parts more frequently than it did before, or use new parts.
Increasing perfection and the response to new requirements of the environment -> only two sides of a single coin!
The crucial difference between Darwin’s and Lamarck’s mechanisms of evolution:
Lamarck: the environment and its changes -> needs -> internal activities -> adaptational variation
Darwin: random variation ->the ordering activity of the environment (natural selection)
Condillac and Diderot -> behavior caused by needs -> Lamarck
Lamarck’s principle of evolutionary adaptation (He order them into new causal sequences and apply them to his evolution):
“First Law”: idea that an organ is being strengthened by use and weakened by disuse
“Second Law”: an inheritance of acquired characters
The Difference between Lamarck’s and Darwin’s Theories
“(Lamarck’s book) which is veritable rubbish... I got not a fact or idea from it. But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so" — Darwin
The fact of evolution (whether the world is static or evolving) -> Lamarck is the first to adopt a consistent theory of evolutionary change
The mechanism of evolution -> Could not have differed more
A primary interest either in diversity(speciation) or in adaptation (phyletic evolution):
Darwinian: adaptation is the result of natural selection
Lamarck: adaptation was the inevitable end product of the physiological processes necessitated by the needs of organisms to cope with the changes in their environment
Lamarck in Retrospect
a belief in soft inheritance(the effect of use and disuse) -> Lamarckism ->Lamarck’s contribution and his stress on behavior, on the environment and on adaptation was entirely ignored
Mentioned only for erroneous ideas:
his belief in soft inheritance,
in innate perfectibility, 
in speciation by spontaneous generation
His major intellectual contributions:
his genuine evolutionism which derived even the most complex organisms from infusorian or wormlike ancestors, 
his unflagging uniformitarianism, his stress of the great age of the earth, 
his emphasis on the gradualness of evolution, 
his recognition of the importance of behavior and of the environment, 
his courage to include man in the evolutionary stream
From Lamarck to Darwin
Philosophie zoologique (1809) -> the breakthrough of evolutionism
6 major theories of evolutionary:
A built-in capacity for or drive toward increasing perfection (autogenetic theories). This was part of Lamarck's theory. 
The effect of use and disuse, combined with an inheritance of acquired characters
Direct induction by the environment.
Saltationism (mutationism). The sudden origin of new species or even more distinct types.
Random (stochastic) differentiation, with neither the environment (directly or through selection) nor internal factors influencing the direction of variation and evolution
Direction (order) imposed on random variation by natural selection (Darwinism in part, neo-Darwinism).
Theory 5 is highly controversial, however, it is almost universally agreed that most evolutionary and variational phenomena can be explained by theory 6 in conjunction with 5.
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Philosophie zoologique(1809) 动物哲学
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teeter on the brink/edge
hack writing 平庸作品
as such 本身，像这样的人事物
dismember, 肢解，disjoint, chop up, pull apart
ad infinitum, forever, unendingly
veritable: used as an intensifier to qualify a metaphor, real, utter
flagging 疲乏
groundswell 高涨(意见的)
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whiggish historiography: an approach tohistoriographythat presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy