Abstract
The chapter describes ideas that undermined and fostered the concept of organic evolution during the first half of the 19th Century. The prevailing Western view about nature at the beginning of the 19th Century was expressed in Reverend William Paley’s popular 1802 book, Natural Theology. The book was based on the idea that animals are so well suited to the environment in which they live that they must be the result of a Divine plan, and it presented the often repeated analogy that the parts of the body are like the parts of a watch, which are so complicated and inter-related that they must be the product of an “intelligent and designing Creator.” By 1809, however, the French zoologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who is recognized as the founder of evolutionary theory, published his Philosophie Zoologique, which claimed that forces of nature, not the direct hand of God, had molded plants and animals to adapt them to the worlds in which they live. As the chapter explains, Lamarck offered two theories of what he called, transformism, which changed generations of animals over vast amounts of time from one form of animal into another form. Although Lamarck’s theories were never widely accepted, Philosophie Zoologique was the best argument at that time for organic evolution, and it even traced the evolution of modern animals from a common ancestor. Despite the rejection of Lamarck’s theories, his book seemed to spur others to develop theories of evolution that culminated in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.
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Notes
- 1.
Fossils are created in sedimentary rock when minerals slowly replace the organic matter that comprise and animal or plant.
- 2.
The reader should keep in mind the figure reflects Lamarck’s best guess about descent from a common ancestor, when the true ancestry of Fish was not known. Lamarck was partially correct in thinking that Reptiles evolved from Fish, although Reptiles actually evolved from Amphibians, which had evolved from Fish. He is also correct that Birds evolved act least indirectly from Reptiles. Monotremes, which are primitive mammals, evolved from Reptiles, not from Birds. Lamarck also mistakenly thought that land mammals (the Ungulate Mammals and Unguiculate Mammals) evolved from Cetacean Mammals, which are sea creatures; Cetacean Mammals actually evolved from Ungulate Mammals, which lived on land. The Cetacean Mammals have adapted to spend their entire lives in water, having flipper-like front limbs and broad tails with horizontal flukes: e.g., dolphins, porpoises, and whales. Like other mammals, however, they breath air and are warm-blooded and viviparous. Ungulate Mammals are animals with hooves, such as antelope, buffalo, deer, horses, and pigs. Unguiculate Mammals are animals that have nails or claws rather than hooves; most of the species of Unguiculate Mammals are carnivorous, such as bears, cats, wolves.
- 3.
Formally, the theory consists of a set of three propositions, from which are deduced two general laws. The three propositions are: (1) That every considerable and sustained change in the surroundings of any animal involves a real change in its needs. (2) That such change of needs involves the necessity of changed action in order to satisfy these needs, and, in consequence, of new habits. (3) It follows that such parts, formerly less used, are now more frequently employed, and in consequence become more highly developed; new parts also become insensibly evolved in the creature by its own efforts from within.
The two laws are: First. that in every animal which has not passed its limit of development, the more frequent and sustained employment of any organ develops and aggrandizes it, giving it a power proportionate to the duration of its employment, while the same organ in default of constant use becomes insensibly weakened and deteriorated, decreasing imperceptibly in power until it finally disappears. Second, that these gains or losses of organic development, due to use or disuse, are transmitted to offspring, provided they have been common to both sexes, or to the animals from which the offspring have descended.
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Flannelly, K.J. (2017). 19th Century Evolutionary Thought Before Charles Darwin. In: Religious Beliefs, Evolutionary Psychiatry, and Mental Health in America. Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52488-7_4
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