Lamarck coined the term biology. Jean Baptiste Lamarck: a short biography. The evolutionary theory of Jean Baptiste Lamarck and his contribution to the development of biology. Lamarck during the French Revolution
Interesting facts from the life of the French scientist, creator of the doctrine of the evolution of living nature, are presented in this article.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck Interesting Facts
Born into an aristocratic, impoverished family. He was the eleventh child.
At the age of 16, Lamarck left college and volunteered for active duty in the army, where participated in the Seven Years' War. In battles, he showed extraordinary courage and rose to the rank of officer.
The scientist also developed his own classification of plants and animals. In 1794, Jean Baptiste divided animals into groups. He identified vertebrates and invertebrates, which he also divided into 10 classes. At the age of 50, Lamarck took up zoology.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck was the first creator of the concept of evolution of living nature, believing that changes in the body are transmitted hereditarily.
He received noble status in 1761.
He was Darwin's predecessor. He was the founder of zoopsychology and introduced the term “biology” into scientific use. Lamarck is the author of the first report on flora in France.
In 1820, when he was 75, Jean Baptiste Lamarck completely blind and until the end of his life he dictated his works to his daughters.
Despite his greatest discoveries, Lamarck lived and died in poverty (at 85).
Lamarck Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet (1744-1829), French scientist, creator of the doctrine of the evolution of living nature.
He was the eleventh child in an impoverished aristocratic family. In 1772-1776. studied at the Higher Medical School in Paris. Then he left medicine and took up natural sciences, in particular botany. The fruit of these studies was the three-volume plant guide “Flora of France” published in 1778. The book brought Lamarck fame, and already in 1779 he was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. At this time, the famous naturalist J. Buffon persuaded Lamarck to accompany his son on his travels. For ten years, Lamarck continued botanical research based on the collections he collected during his travels, as well as materials received from scientists from other European countries.
In 1793, when Lamarck was already approaching fifty, the scientist took up zoology, and in 1809 his “Philosophy of Zoology” was published. In this book, Lamarck acted primarily as the creator of the first holistic concept of the evolution of living nature. According to it, all creatures on Earth descended from primitively constructed ancestors that were unlike them. The development of organic matter, according to Lamarck, is determined, firstly, by its integral internal property - the desire for progress and, secondly, by the influence of the environment on organisms.
The scientist believed that intensively functioning organs strengthen and develop. In contrast, those that are not used weaken and decrease. And most importantly, changes are inherited. Changes in external conditions lead to changes in the animal's needs. This, in turn, entails a change in habits and, accordingly, a restructuring in the system of organ functioning.
Lamarck also worked on the classification of animals and plants. In 1794 he divided everyone
animals into groups - vertebrates and invertebrates, and the latter, in turn, into ten classes (unlike K. Linnaeus, who proposed two classes). The living itself, according to Lamarck, arose from the inanimate by the will of the Creator and further developed on the basis of strict causal dependencies.
Now scientists are increasingly turning to Lamarck’s theory, the provisions of which seemed hopelessly outdated just a few years ago. But their contemporaries did not accept them at all. Only when, half a century after the publication of “Philosophy of Zoology,” Charles Darwin published his book “The Origin of Species” in 1859, did scientists remember his predecessor.
In 1909, a monument to the scientist was unveiled in the French capital in honor of the centenary of the appearance of the Philosophy of Zoology.
French natural scientist. Lamarck became the first biologist who tried to create a coherent and holistic theory of the evolution of the living world, known in our time as one of the historical evolutionary concepts called “Lamarckism”. Denied the existence of species. Unappreciated by his contemporaries, half a century later his theory became the subject of heated discussions that have not stopped in our time. Lamarck’s important work was the book “Philosophy of Zoology” (French: Philosophie zoologique), published in 1809.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck was born on August 1, 1744 in the town of Bazantin into a family of poor nobles. He belonged to an old, but long-impoverished family and was the eleventh child in the family. Most of his ancestors on both his father and mother were military men. His father and older brothers also served in the army. But a military career required funds that the family did not have. Lamarck was sent to a Jesuit college to prepare for the clergy. In college he was introduced to philosophy, mathematics, physics and ancient languages. At the age of 16, Lamarck left college and volunteered for the active army, where he participated in the Seven Years' War. In battles, he showed extraordinary courage and rose to the rank of officer.
At the age of twenty-four, Lamarck left military service and after some time came to Paris to study medicine. During his studies, he became interested in natural sciences, especially botany.
The young scientist had plenty of talent and effort, and in 1778 he published a three-volume work, “French Flora” (Flore française). In its third edition, Lamarck began to introduce a two-part, or analytical, system of plant classification. This system is a key, or determinant, the principle of which is to compare characteristic similar features with each other and combine a number of opposing characteristics, thus leading to the name of plants. These dichotomous keys, which are still widely used in our time, have provided important services, because they have inspired many to engage in botany.
The book brought him fame, he became one of the largest French botanists.
Five years later, Lamarck was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.
Lamarck during the French Revolution
In 1789-1794, the Great French Revolution broke out in France, which Lamarck greeted with approval (according to TSB - “warmly welcomed”). It radically changed the fate of most French people. The terrible year of 1793 dramatically changed the fate of Lamarck himself. Old institutions were closed or transformed.
Lamarck's scientific activities in the field of biology
At Lamarck's suggestion, in 1793 the Royal Botanical Garden, where he worked, was reorganized into the Museum of Natural History, where he became a professor in the department of zoology of insects, worms and microscopic animals, Lamarck headed this department for 24 years.
At almost fifty years of age, it was not easy to change his specialty, but the scientist’s perseverance helped him overcome all difficulties. Lamarck became as expert in the field of zoology as he was in the field of botany.
Lamarck enthusiastically took up the study of invertebrate animals (it was he who proposed calling them “invertebrates” in 1796). From 1815 to 1822, Lamarck’s major seven-volume work “Natural History of Invertebrates” was published, in which he described all their genera and species known at that time. If Linnaeus divided them into only two classes (worms and insects), then Lamarck identified 10 classes among them (modern scientists distinguish more than 30 types among invertebrates).
Lamarck introduced another term that became generally accepted - “biology” (in 1802). He did this simultaneously with the German scientist G. R. Treviranus and independently of him.
But the most important work of the scientist was the book “Philosophy of Zoology,” published in 1809. In it he outlined his theory of the evolution of the living world.
The Lamarckists (students of Lamarck) created an entire scientific school, complementing the Darwinian idea of selection and “survival of the fittest” with a more noble, from a human point of view, “striving for progress” in living nature.
The giraffe is an example of an animal’s adaptability to environmental conditions in Lamarck’s teachings
Lamarck answered the question of how the external environment makes living things adapted to itself:
Circumstances influence the form and organization of animals... If this expression is taken literally, I will no doubt be accused of error, for, whatever the circumstances, they do not of themselves produce any changes in the form and organization of animals. But a significant change in circumstances leads to significant changes in needs, and changes in these latter necessarily entail changes in actions. And so, if new needs become constant or very long-lasting, animals acquire habits that turn out to be as long-lasting as the needs that determined them...
If circumstances lead to the fact that the condition of individuals becomes normal and permanent for them, then the internal organization of such individuals eventually changes. The offspring resulting from the crossing of such individuals retains the acquired changes and, as a result, a breed is formed that is very different from the one whose individuals were always in conditions favorable for their development.
J.-B. Lamarck
As an example of the action of circumstances through habit, Lamarck cited the giraffe:
This tallest of mammals is known to live in the interior of Africa and is found in places where the soil is almost always dry and devoid of vegetation. This causes the giraffe to eat tree leaves and make constant efforts to reach it. As a result of this habit, which has existed for a long time among all individuals of this breed, the giraffe’s front legs have become longer than its hind legs, and its neck has lengthened so much that this animal, without even rising on its hind legs, raising only its head, reaches six meters in height.
J.-B. Lamarck
Some works of Lamarck
Year Title Comment
1776 Memoir on the main phenomena in the atmosphere In 1776, the work was submitted to the French Academy of Sciences. No information about printing
1776 Research on the causes of the most important physical phenomena Published in 1794
1778 Flora of France
1801 Invertebrate animal system
1802 Hydrogeology
Since 1803 Natural history of plants Includes 15 volumes. The first two volumes devoted to the history and principles of botany belong to J. B. Lamarck
1809 Philosophy of Zoology. In 2 volumes
1815-1822 Natural history of invertebrates. In 7 volumes
1820 Analysis of conscious human activity
last years of life
By 1820, Lamarck was completely blind and dictated his works to his daughter. He lived and died in poverty and obscurity, living to the age of 85, on December 18, 1829. Until his last hour, his daughter Cornelia remained with him, writing from the dictation of her blind father.
Monument to Lamarck in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The inscription reads: “A. Lamarck / Fondateur de la doctrine de l"évolution" (Lamarck, founder of the doctrine of evolution)
In 1909, on the centenary of the publication of the Philosophy of Zoology, a monument to Lamarck was inaugurated in Paris. One of the bas-reliefs of the monument depicts Lamarck in old age, having lost his sight. He sits in a chair, and his daughter, standing next to him, says to him: “Posterity will admire you, father, they will avenge you!”
During Lamarck's lifetime, in 1794, the German botanist Conrad Moench named the genus of Mediterranean cereals Lamarckia (Lamarckia) in honor of the scientist.
In 1964, the International Astronomical Union assigned the name Lamarck to a crater on the visible side of the Moon.
Essays
In addition to botanical and zoological works, Lamarck published a number of works on hydrology, geology and meteorology. In “Hydrogeology” (published in 1802), Lamarck put forward the principle of historicism and actualism in the interpretation of geological phenomena.
Système des animaux sans vertèbres, P., 1801 (French);
Système analytique des connaissances positives de l'homme. P., 1820 (French);
Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres, 2 ed., t. 1-11, P., 1835-1845 (French); in Russian lane - Philosophy of Zoology, vol. 1-2, M. - L., 1935-1937;
Merits of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
The largest scientist of the pre-Darwinian period of biology, creationist, Swedish naturalist and naturalist.
In this job.
In 1735, the work “System of Nature” presented a progressive system of the organic world;
established the universality and reality of species and identified their main feature (free crossing of individuals of the same species);
introduced the basic units of taxonomy: species, genus, family, order, class;
created a system of the organic world in which plants were divided into 24 classes: 23 classes of clairvoyant (flowering) and 1 class of cryptogamous (gymnosperms and spores). Among the phantoms, the first 12 classes were distinguished only by the number of stamens, the 13th included plants that had more than twelve stamens, and when classifying plants into classes 14-23, the structure of the androecium was also taken into account. Animals were divided into 6 classes (worms, insects, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals);
introduced binary (double) nomenclature, which indicated the belonging of an organism to genus and species;
described about 10 thousand species of plants and about 4.5 thousand species of animals;
improved the botanical language, establishing up to 1000 terms;
was the first to place humans in the same order as apes on the basis of morphological similarity.
Evolutionary theory of Jean Baptiste Lamarck
The first one proved that there is evolution. The unit of evolution is the individual organism. The driving force is the desire for progress. The direction of evolution is gradation, deviation from gradation. The result of evolution is the fitness of organisms, speciation.
1. He opposed metaphysical views and believed that the formation of new species occurs, but very slowly and therefore imperceptibly.
2. Created the first doctrine of evolution, in which he formulated provisions on the driving forces and directions of evolution.
3. He was the first to use the terms “kinship” and “family ties” to denote unity of origin.
4. Correctly represented the general picture of the historical development of the organic world - the movement from simple to complex (gradation theory).
5. Created a classification of animals, divided all animals into vertebrates and invertebrates.
1. Incorrectly identified the driving forces of evolution.
2. He incorrectly believed that fitness arises indirectly - the external environment changes, and the body develops new needs and changes in behavior.
3. He incorrectly believed that changes in the environment bring only beneficial changes in organisms. Organisms have an innate ability to respond to environmental changes only with positive changes.
4. Denied the fact of the real existence of species in nature. Living nature was represented as rows of constantly changing individuals, which a person unites into a species only in the imagination.
5. The individual was considered the unit of evolution.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829) French scientist and naturalist was born in northern France in the town of Bazantin. He was the youngest in a large family of a small landowner. His parents wanted him to become a priest and sent the boy to a Jesuit school. However, after the death of his father, in 1761, Jean changed his fate - after finishing school, he joined the active army. There he showed great courage and, despite his young age, received the rank of officer.
After the end of the war, Lamarck abandoned the military career that had opened up to him and went to Paris, where he entered the medical faculty of the Sorbonne. During his studies, he became interested in natural sciences, especially botany. After years of hard work, he published his first serious work in three volumes, “French Flora.” This scientific research brought him fame, and he was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. By the age of fifty, Lamarck enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the largest botanists in France. In 1793, the Royal Botanic Gardens was converted into a natural history museum with six departments for the teaching of natural sciences, in which Lamarck received the chair of invertebrate zoology. A new period begins in the life of a scientist - the period of classical research in the field of invertebrate zoology.
Until this time, in the taxonomy of invertebrates there was a description by Linnaeus, who divided them into 2 classes. As a result of serious and painstaking work, Lamarck, in his multi-volume publication “Natural History of Invertebrates,” described all the species and genera of these organisms known at that time and identified more than 10 classes among them. In the same work, the scientist outlined his ideas about the evolution of the animal world.
By the age of 60, Lamarck knew everything that was known to modern science about plants and animals. Now Scientists” set himself the task of writing a book that would not just describe individual organisms, but would explain the laws of development of living nature. In his new work, Lamarck decided to show how animals and plants appeared, how they changed and how they reached their modern state. He created a new doctrine of the evolution of living nature (Lamarckism), which he outlined in his work “Philosophy of Zoology” (1809). The scientific research dealt not only with animals, but with all living nature.
The essence of Lamarck's theory was the assertion that animals and plants were not always the way we see them now. In his opinion, the formation of species occurs very slowly and is therefore imperceptible.
Lamarck believed that organisms should be placed in a system as steps on a ladder depicting the historical path of development of living nature from lower to higher organisms. He divided animals into vertebrates and invertebrates, placing them in six stages. At the bottom were ciliates and polyps. Each subsequent, higher stage was characterized by complication in the structure of the main organ systems - nervous and circulatory. At the highest level, Lamarck placed birds and mammals. He called this arrangement gradation (ascension). But Lamarck mistakenly believed that the main force driving the entire evolutionary process is the internal, inherent desire for perfection in organisms, which, in his opinion, was originally inherent in living matter by the Creator. Thus, the most important question about the cause of evolutionary development did not receive a scientific explanation from the scientist.
Lamarck failed to convincingly prove the cause of fitness. He explained it one-sidedly: by exercise and non-exercise of organs, especially in higher animals. For example, the swimming membrane between the fingers of waterfowl was formed, according to the scientist, due to stretching of the skin; He explained the absence of legs in snakes by the habit of stretching their body when crawling on the ground.
Observation helped Lamarck to draw a conclusion about the influence of the external environment on changes in organisms. For example, a plant grown in the shade is not the same as a plant grown in the light. Plants of the same species growing in different climatic zones also differ.
But Lamarck studied not only flora and fauna. His works on geophysics and meteorology represent no less significant contribution to science. In the book “Hydrogeology,” the scientist first showed that the face of the Earth is gradually changing under the influence of precipitation, wind and sun. It is curious that the very name of the science of life - biology - was also introduced by Lamarck.
Of course, from the point of view of modern biology, much of Lamarck’s theory is outdated. But the problem of the influence of the external environment on the organic world, first posed by him, is also recognized by modern biology.
The main thing in Lamarck’s teaching was not to explain the causes of evolution, but to the fact that he was the first, half a century before Darwin, to propose his theory of the natural origin and development of the organic world.
His evolutionary teaching was not sufficiently conclusive and did not receive wide recognition among his contemporaries. Secretly counting on Napoleon's support, Lamarck decided to present him with his life's work. But the emperor, who considered himself a patron of science, only publicly ridiculed the scientist.
In the last years of his life, Lamarck lived in terrible poverty. He went blind, but continued to work on his works, which he dictated to his daughter Cornelia. The scientist died on December 18, 1829. In 1909, in connection with the centenary of the publication of “Philosophy of Zoology,” a monument to Jean Baptiste Lamarck was erected in Paris. Many years after the death of the French naturalist, his descendants appreciated his works and recognized him as a great scientist. In his famous work “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” Charles Darwin proved the correctness of Lamarck’s theory. The idea of the historical development of organisms came to life again and became firmly established in biological science.
