Complexity_ A Guided Tour - Melanie Mitchell [36]
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744–1829 (Illustration from LES CONTEMPORAINS N 554: Lamarck, naturaliste {1744–1829}, by Louis Théret, Bonne Press, 1903. Photograph copyright © by Scientia Digital [http://www.scientiadigital.com]. Reprinted by perimission.)
However, it seems that Charles Darwin himself was, at least at first, favorably impressed by Lamarck: “Lamarck…had few clear facts, but so bold and many such profound judgment that he foreseeing consequence was endowed with what may be called the prophetic spirit in science. The highest endowment of lofty genius.” Darwin also believed that, in addition to natural selection, the inheritance of acquired characteristics was one of the mechanisms of evolution (though this belief did not survive as part of what we now call “Darwinism”).
Neither Lamarck nor Darwin had a good theory of how such inheritance could take place. However, as the science of genetics became better understood in the years after Darwin, the inheritance of acquired characteristics seemed almost certain to be impossible. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Lamarck’s theories were no longer taken seriously in evolutionary biology, though several prominent psychologists still believed in them as an explanation of some aspects of the mind, such as instinct. For example, Sigmund Freud expressed the view that “if [the] instinctual life of animals permits of any explanation at all, it can only be this: that they carry over into their new existence the experience of their kind; that is to say, that they have preserved in their minds memories of what their ancestors experienced.” I don’t think these beliefs remained in psychology much beyond the time of Freud.
Origins of Darwin’s Theory
Charles Darwin should be an inspiration to youthful underachievers everywhere. As a child, he was a mediocre student in an overachieving family. (His usually loving father, a successful country doctor, in a moment of frustration complained bitterly to the teenaged Charles: “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and your family!”) Underachieving as he might have been then, he went on to be the most famous, and most important, biologist of all time.
In 1831, while trying to decide on his future career (country doctor or country parson seemed to be the choices), Darwin was offered a dual job as both “naturalist” and “captain’s dining companion” on a survey ship, the H.M.S. Beagle. The ship’s captain was a “gentleman,” and a bit lonely, so he wanted to dine with another gentleman rather than with the riff-raff of the ship’s crew. Darwin was his man.
Darwin spent almost five years on the Beagle (1831–1836), much of the time in South America, where, in addition to his dining duties, he collected plants, animals, and fossils and did a lot of reading, thinking, and writing. Fortunately he wrote many letters and kept extensive notebooks full of his observations, ideas, opinions, reactions to books, et cetera; his detailed recording of his thoughts went on for the rest of his life. If Darwin were alive today, he clearly would have been an obsessive blogger.
Charles Darwin, 1809–1882. Photograph taken in 1854, a few years before he published Origin of Species. (Reproduced with permission from John van Wyhe, ed., The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online [http://darwin-online.org.uk/].)
During and after the Beagle voyage, Darwin got a lot of ideas from his reading of scientific books and articles from various disciplines. He was convinced by Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) that geological features (mountains, canyons, rock formations) arise from gradual processes of erosion, wind, myriad floods, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes, rather than from catastrophic events such as the biblical Noah’s flood. Such a view of gradualism—that small causes, taken over long periods, can have very large effects—was anathema to religious fundamentalists of the day, but Lyell’s evidence was compelling to Darwin, especially as,