Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work

"Owing to the extreme multiplication of the small species, and especially of the most imperfect animals, the multiplicity of individuals might be prejudicial to the preservation...

Since the appearance of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, and after the great naturalist had converted the world to a belief in the general doctrine of evolution, there has arisen i...

The first occasion on which, so far as his published writings show, Lamarck expressed his evolutional views was in the opening lecture[162] of his course on the invertebrate ani...

Whatever may be said of his chemical and physical lucubrations, Lamarck in his geological and palæontological writings is, despite their errors, always suggestive, and in some m...

It was fortunate for palæontology that the two greatest zoölogists of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, Lamarck and Cuvier, lived in the P...

Lamarck's career as a botanist comprised about twenty-five years. We now come to the third stage of his life--Lamarck the zoölogist and evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year...

Of the French precursors of Lamarck there were four--Duret (1609), De Maillet (1748), Robinet (1768), and Buffon. The opinions of the first three could hardly be taken seriously...

Lamarck died before the rise of the sciences of morphology, embryology, and cytology. As to palæontology, which he aided in founding, he had but the slightest idea of the geolog...

Lamarck's views on the origin of man are contained in his _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps vivans_ (1802) and his _Philosophie zoologique_, published in 1809. We give th...

Although there has been and still may be a difference of opinion as to the value and permanency of Lamarck's theoretical views, there has never been any lack of appreciation of...

De Blainville, a worthy successor of Lamarck, in his posthumous book, _Cuvier et Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_, pays the highest tribute to his predecessor, whose position as the lead...

The life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a man of genius who lived far in advance of his age, and who died comparatively unappreciated and neglected. But his original and ph...

Lamarck's life was saddened and embittered by the loss of four wives, and the pangs of losing three of his children;[40] also by the rigid economy he had to practise and the une...

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born in 1731, or twenty-four years after Buffon. He was an English country physician with a large practice, and not only i...

Even in his humble position as keeper of the herbarium, with its pitiable compensation, Lamarck, now an eminent botanist, with a European reputation, was by no means appreciated...

One who has read the writings of the great French naturalist, who may be regarded as the founder of evolution, will readily realize that Lamarck's mind was essentially philosoph...

When a medical student in Paris, Lamarck, from day to day watching the clouds from his attic windows, became much interested in meteorology, and, indeed, at first this subject h...

Lamarck's mature views on the theory of descent comprise a portion of his celebrated _Philosophie zoologique_. We will let him tell the story of creation by natural causes so fa...

The profession of arms had not led Lamarck to forget the principles of physical science which he had received at college. During his sojourn at Monaco the singular vegetation of...

During the century preceding the time of Lamarck, botany had not flourished in France with the vigor shown in other countries. Lamarck himself frankly stated in his address to t...

Lamarck's mind was essentially philosophical. He was given to inquiring into the causes and origin of things. When thirty-two years old he wrote his "Researches on the Causes of...