Early Concepts of Evolution: Jean Baptiste Lamarck (2 of 2)

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Evolution by Natural Processes
Lamarck was mocked and attacked by Cuvier and many other naturalists of his day. While they questioned him on scientific grounds, many of them were also disturbed by the theological implications of his work. Lamarck was proposing that life took on its current form through natural processes, not through miraculous interventions. For British naturalists in particular, steeped as they were in natural theology, this was appalling. They believed that nature was a reflection of God’s benevolent design. To them, it seemed Lamarck was claiming that it was the result of blind primal forces. Shunned by the scientific community, Lamarck died in 1829 in poverty and obscurity.

But the notion of evolution did not die with him. The French naturalist Geoffroy St. Hilaire would champion another version of evolutionary change in the 1820s, and the British writer Robert Chambers would author a best-selling argument for evolution in 1844: Vestiges of a Natural Creation. And in 1859, Charles Darwin would publish the Origin of Species.

Different from Darwin
In many ways, Darwin’s central argument is very different from Lamarck’s. Darwin did not accept an arrow of complexity driving through the history of life. He argued that complexity evolved simply as a result of life adapting to its local conditions from one generation to the next. He also argued that species could go extinct rather than change into new forms. But Darwin also relied on much the same evidence for evolution that Lamarck did (such as vestigial structures and artificial selection through breeding). And Darwin wrongly accepted that changes acquired during an organism’s lifetime could be passed on to its offspring.

Lamarckian inheritance remained popular throughout the 1800s, in large part because scientists did not yet understand how heredity works. With the discovery of genes, it was finally abandoned for the most part. But Lamarck, whom Darwin described as “this justly celebrated naturalist,” remains a major figure in the history of biology for envisioning evolutionary change for the first time.