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LAMARCK, JEAN BAPTISTE PIERRE ANTOINE
DE MONET DE (b. Bazentin-le-Petit, Picardy,
France, 1 August 1744; d. Paris, France, 28 December
1829), botany, invertebrate zoology and paleontology,
evolution.
with the most primitive level and working up through
time to the more complex. Lamarck shared with the
Philosophes a belief in the idea of progress in human
knowledge, which is clearly seen in his brief history of
botany. Increasing progress over time is almost
inevitable if circumstances are favorable. He was later
to apply such a conception to natural as well as
human history.
In the Dictionnaire de botanique Lamarck developed
the theoretical and philosophical ideas he had advanced
in the Flore. The “Discours préliminaire”
was an expanded version of the history of botany from
the Flore and it showed even more fully Lamarck's
belief in the idea of progress. Lamarck himself had
made some progress in his search for a natural
method of vegetable classification. Following some
suggestions from A. L. de Jussieu, he decided that a
hierarchical arrangement could be established only
for the larger groupings or classes of plants. A focus
on classes rather than genera or species would later
be an important part of his evolutionary theory.
Lamarck's new views were set forth in the article
“Classe,” in which he listed the classes of plants,
arranged from the most complex to the least complex;
placement on the scale was determined by relative
structural complexity. To complete the realm of living
organisms, Lamarck presented a parallel series of
descending classes for the animal kingdom. In pointing
out the similarities between plants and animals, he
laid the foundations for his biology. In another table
the nonliving natural productions were also arranged
in order of decreasing complexity. Lamarck held that
all mineral substances were produced by organic
beings as they and their waste products decayed over
time and their debris underwent successive transformations
until the simple element level was reached.
The fact that Lamarck drew up these tables of comparison
shows his concern with seeing nature as
a whole.
During the 1790's, Lamarck's interests and studies
turned away from botany to new fields. After 1800,
when he began advocating his theory of evolution, he
wrote only one work specifically dealing with botany.
His two-volume Introduction à la botanique (1803)
formed part of the fifteen-volume Histoire naturelle
des végétaux; the rest of the work was written by
Mirbel. This study of the vegetable kingdom was in
turn part of the larger eighty-volume Cours complet
d'histoire naturelle pour faire suite à Buffon edited by
Castel. Lamarck's Introduction was his only botanical
work to include his evolutionary theory. He stressed
that for the vegetable kingdom a natural order of
classification beginning with the simplest class and
ending with the most complex class reflected the
order which nature had followed in producing these
groups in time. Although this was his last botanical
work, Lamarck did not stop thinking about the
vegetable kingdom. He discussed it in all of his
evolutionary works and drew a number of examples
from it.
Institutional Affiliations.
Lamarck's election to the
Académie des Sciences as an adjoint botanist was
engineered by Buffon in 1779. He was promoted to an
associate botanist in 1783 and became a pensioner in
1790. The Academy was suppressed in 1793, during
the Terror; it was reorganized two years later as part
of the Institut National des Sciences et des Arts. From
1795 until his death, Lamarck was a resident member
of the botanical section. Until his health failed, he
attended meetings regularly and prepared a number
of reports on works submitted to the Academy.
In the 1790's Lamarck took an active role in the
newly formed Société d'Histoire Naturelle, which
included the prominent French naturalists of the time.
He helped edit several of its publications and contributed
a number of articles on botany and invertebrates
to them.
Lamarck's most significant institutional affiliation
was with the Jardin du Roi, which had become an
important scientific center in the second half of the
eighteenth century under the leadership of Buffon.
From 1788 until 1793, Lamarck held various minor
botanical positions there. During the French revolution,
when all the institutions of the ancien régime
were being subjected to critical examination, suggestions
were made for the reorganization of the
Jardin du Roi, among them a memoir by Lamarck.
In 1793, when the academies were suppressed as
privileged institutions of the old order, the Jardin du
Roi was transformed into the Muséum National
d'Histoire Naturelle. The botanical positions were
filled by others and Lamarck was made a professor of
zoology for the study of “insects and worms,” a
group of animals which he renamed “invertebrates.”
While this represented a rather drastic shift in fields
for him, Lamarck was not unhappy about it, for he
had been developing an interest in these animals.
His new duties consisted of giving courses and
classifying the large collection of invertebrates at the
museum. He also took an active part in the administration
of the new institution. Lamarck's own work
benefited from contacts with his colleagues and their
scientific investigations at the museum.
Chemistry.
The first long works that Lamarck
published after the reorganization of the museum
dealt not with invertebrates but with chemistry, a
subject in which he had been interested for many years.
He had begun to study chemistry in the 1770's, when