CHAPTER THREE
Seeds of Hierarchy
Two-Factor Theories • Lamarck and the Birth of Modern Evolutionism in
Two-Factor Theories
THE MYTHS OF LAMARCKIn 1793, the French revolutionary government, having expunged the past by
executing a monarch, proclaimed a new beginning of time. They renamed the
months, and started the calendar all over again with the foundation of the Republic
in September 1792. The old months had honored emperors and gods, but the new
months would celebrate the passing of seasons by weather and activity—Brumaire
(the foggy month in fall), Thermidor (the hot times of mid summer), and Nivose
(for the depth of a frosty winter), for example.
Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829)—
now redesignated, with democratic brevity, as Citoyen Lamarck— became
professor of "lower" animals (the old Linnaean classes Insecta and Vermes, later
renamed "invertebrates" by Lamarck himself) at the newly founded Museum
d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793. (His previous work, nearly all in botany, had not
prepared him for this new role, though he had long been an avid shell collector and
student of conchology.) Until 1797, he had supported the conventional idea of
species as fixed entities. But he then became an evolutionist, first expressing this
new view of life in his inaugural lecture for the Museum course of 1800, and then
in three major works—the Recherches sur I'organisation des corps vivans of 1802;
his most famous work, the Philosophie zoologique of 1809; and the Histoire
naturelle des animaux sans vertebres of 1815-1822.
In an ironic symbol, Lamarck first presented his evolutionary theories in an
inaugural lecture pronounced on the 21st day of Floreal, year VIII (May 11,
1800)—in the month of flowering. For Lamarck's theory suffered the opposite fate
of withering, and the scorn of inattention. We all know the image of Lamarck—an
impression carefully nurtured, for different reasons, by friends and foes alike—as a
lonely man (a prophet before his time to some, a kook to others), penniless,
friendless, and, finally, blind; living out the last days of a long and sad life,
supported only by his devoted daughters.
This image of a forgotten failure was fostered by the two greatest figures of
19th century natural history—first by Cuvier, and later by Darwin. Darwin said
little about Lamarck (see pp. 192-197), but his derision still permeates
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