Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
1. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
2. Lamarck was a french biologist and academic that was an early contributor to that idea that biological evolution occurred with respect to natural laws. He viewed evolution as a process of increasing complexity and "perfection". Lamarck published a series of books on invertebrate zoology and paleontology. His book Philosohpie zoologique is said to most clearly state his theories of evolution. He also introduced concepts such as organisms changing with respect to the change of the environment.
3. Lamarck's colleague Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire thought that organisms are not altered by the environment. Lamarck thought differently. Instead he believed a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of an organism which alters the behavior of the organism. In turn the altered behavior leads to a change in structure of the organism over several generations. This rule was called the "First Law" as it was remarked in his book mentioned earlier. This corresponds to the bullet point "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different."
4. I do think that Darwin most likely could have developed his theory of natural selection without the work of Lamarck. Although the work of Lamarck was impactful in the way it contrasted against the current evolutionary ideology, but it may not have been the reason as to why Darwin came across the theory. It seems to me that the ideas and people that changed Darwin the most were those in the social circle of scientists in London called the Geological Society of London. John Gould announced that the birds on the Galapagos that Darwin thought were mixtures of two different birds (gros-beaks and finches) were in fact twelve separate species of finches. On his return to England his influences from people like Charles Babbage and John Gould lead him to speculate that one species does not change into another. This was to explain the distribution of species. His thoughts had developed as he continued to write in his notebook and eventually postulated the idea of variation offspring and the idea to adapt to adjust to the changing world. It may be that the ideas of Lamarck had accelerated the finding of Darwin's discoveries in some way, but due to the amount of overwhelming undiscovered data that is available in nature, I firmly believe he would have came up with his theory of evolution without the works of Lamarck.
5. Interestingly, there is a long held belief that Darwin refrained from publishing his theory because of the negative reaction it may provoke. In further research, this is actually a common myth and Darwin may not have been afraid of publishing his theory at all. Regardless, the response of the Church of England was said to be mixed. His work was dismissed by some of his academic mentors.A clergymen interpreted natural selection as something God had instilled into nature, which may have been a chilling thought. Other religious figures had not taken the idea so easily. The idea that humans were descendants of apes was a difficult idea to accept. This lead to the movement that is known as Darwinism and Darwin's ideas were strongly argued for by people like Joseph Hooker, a British botanist and explorer.
Resources used:
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/%C2%93darwins-delay%C2%94-the-stuff-of-myth
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsnr.2006.0171
2. Lamarck was a french biologist and academic that was an early contributor to that idea that biological evolution occurred with respect to natural laws. He viewed evolution as a process of increasing complexity and "perfection". Lamarck published a series of books on invertebrate zoology and paleontology. His book Philosohpie zoologique is said to most clearly state his theories of evolution. He also introduced concepts such as organisms changing with respect to the change of the environment.
3. Lamarck's colleague Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire thought that organisms are not altered by the environment. Lamarck thought differently. Instead he believed a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of an organism which alters the behavior of the organism. In turn the altered behavior leads to a change in structure of the organism over several generations. This rule was called the "First Law" as it was remarked in his book mentioned earlier. This corresponds to the bullet point "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different."
4. I do think that Darwin most likely could have developed his theory of natural selection without the work of Lamarck. Although the work of Lamarck was impactful in the way it contrasted against the current evolutionary ideology, but it may not have been the reason as to why Darwin came across the theory. It seems to me that the ideas and people that changed Darwin the most were those in the social circle of scientists in London called the Geological Society of London. John Gould announced that the birds on the Galapagos that Darwin thought were mixtures of two different birds (gros-beaks and finches) were in fact twelve separate species of finches. On his return to England his influences from people like Charles Babbage and John Gould lead him to speculate that one species does not change into another. This was to explain the distribution of species. His thoughts had developed as he continued to write in his notebook and eventually postulated the idea of variation offspring and the idea to adapt to adjust to the changing world. It may be that the ideas of Lamarck had accelerated the finding of Darwin's discoveries in some way, but due to the amount of overwhelming undiscovered data that is available in nature, I firmly believe he would have came up with his theory of evolution without the works of Lamarck.
5. Interestingly, there is a long held belief that Darwin refrained from publishing his theory because of the negative reaction it may provoke. In further research, this is actually a common myth and Darwin may not have been afraid of publishing his theory at all. Regardless, the response of the Church of England was said to be mixed. His work was dismissed by some of his academic mentors.A clergymen interpreted natural selection as something God had instilled into nature, which may have been a chilling thought. Other religious figures had not taken the idea so easily. The idea that humans were descendants of apes was a difficult idea to accept. This lead to the movement that is known as Darwinism and Darwin's ideas were strongly argued for by people like Joseph Hooker, a British botanist and explorer.
Resources used:
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/%C2%93darwins-delay%C2%94-the-stuff-of-myth
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsnr.2006.0171
Since this is an assignment on the influence of various scientists on Darwin's work, it would have been helpful to make sure that was well explained in this opening paragraph.
ReplyDelete"He also introduced concepts such as organisms changing with respect to the change of the environment."
Yes, that is what applies to Darwin's work, but expand. What was Lamarck's mechanism called? How did it work? And how did his mechanism differ from Darwin's?
For example: Lamarck must be acknowledged as the first naturalist to propose an actual mechanism regarding the process of evolution. Even though the mechanism turned out to be wrong, this is a very big deal. Lamarck also recognized the importance of the environment on shaping organisms and he also understood that the traits must be heritable and passed on through reproduction in order for evolutionary changes to spread. So these are important to explain. The key difference between Darwin's and Lamarck's theories is when the evolutionary process occurs. Lamarck argued that individuals evolve and pass those changes onto their offspring. Darwin understood that this process wouldn't work. He argued instead that natural selection acted on existing natural variation in a population, selecting those variants that competed more successfully in a given environment and produced more offspring as a result. I.e., Darwin argued that "Individuals don't evolve. Populations do."
Great discussion on Lamarck's recognition of the importance of the environment in evolutionary change. Did Lamarck influence any other points? I can think of two or three more. Lamarck recognized the importance of reproduction and inheritance to the process of evolution. I would also have included the point that "individuals don't evolve. Populations do", not because this was Lamarck's point but because he argued the opposite. Darwin recognized the problem with Lamarck's logic and countered it, so this could be viewed as a negative, oppositional influence by Lamarck.
" It seems to me that the ideas and people that changed Darwin the most were those in the social circle of scientists in London called the Geological Society of London."
I agree... but then shouldn't you have chosen Charles Lyell for this assignment? ;-) He was a member of the Geological Society of London from 1819 until 1875, serving as Secretary, Foreign Secretary and President for the society.
"Darwin may not have been afraid of publishing his theory at all."
"May not" is weak tea here... and it completely ignores the reality of the influence of the church on London society during this time period.
You go on to talk about the actual response of the church, but that wasn't the point of the question here. The issue was Darwin's decision regarding *publishing*.
Darwin was deeply torn about publishing and very few people knew of his work for this reason. (Note that one of his confidante's who was included in his work was Charles Lyell.) He was also concerned about his wife's reaction to his work and how she might be impacted by publishing. Emma read and approved his paper before he published.
Don't underestimate the power the church held even during Darwin's time. No, they weren't putting scientists under house arrest or burning them at the stake, but that doesn't mean the church couldn't make their lives (and the lives of their families) difficult, either through social, political or professional pressure.