Lamarck's Science of Living Bodies

Abstract

As a historical figure, Lamarck proves a rather difficult subject. His writings give us few explicit leads to his intellectual debts; nor do they present his theories as the outcome of any sustained course of observations or experimental research; and, what is equally frustrating, it is hard to see how his personal development as a scientific theorist was affected by the dramatic political and social upheavals of the period, in which he took an active and lively interest. 1 And so, with his importance for later writers much clearer than his relationship to those of his own and earlier ages, historians have repeatedly interpreted his works as prophetic of doctrines developed more fully by subsequent generations. No less surprisingly, this facile tactic has provoked a reaction; we have been offered Lamarck as a Stoic, a romantic, harking back to Heraclitus. 2 As history, neither of these interpretations can satisfy, of course. It is influences which make sense of history, and, to put it mildly (without forgetting the important use made by the French Enlightenment of ancient authors) it is hardly likely that Lamarck was extensively influenced, even indirectly, by Heraclitus, and—popular “historiography of ideas” notwithstanding—impossible that he was indebted to the as yet unborn Darwin.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 65 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.