Seeds of Hierarchy 173
of parts, which are [also] shaped by environmental conditions (1815, in
Corsi, 1988, p. 190).Since watchdogs tend to be more vigilant than publicists, Lamarck's
opponents among the natural theologians often noted (and deplored) his
materialism. The pious Reverend William Kirby, one of Britain's greatest
entomologists, made a statement that I regard as both trenchant and descriptively
accurate (in Burkhardt, 1977, p. 189): "Lamarck's great error, and that of many
other of his compatriots, is materialism; he seems to have no faith in anything but
body, attributing every thing to a physical, and scarcely anything to a metaphysical
cause. Even when, in words, he admits the being of a God, he employs the whole
strength of his intellect to prove that he had nothing to do with the works of
creation. Thus he excludes the Deity from the government of the world that he has
created, putting nature in his place."
Curiously, each generation of historians and biological commentators has to
discover, anew and for itself—and by reading original sources rather than imbibing
mythology—this general and mainstream scientific) position held by a man with
such idiosyncratic views on specific subjects (see Mayr, 1972, and Simpson,
1961a, for the scientists; Gillispie, 1959; Burkhardt, 1977; and Corsi, 1988, for
historians). For example, Gillispie wrote in his classic article for the Darwinian
centenary (1959, p. 275): "Life is a purely physical phenomenon in Lamarck, and it
is only because science has (quite rightly) left behind his conception of the
physical that he has been systematically misunderstood and assimilated to a theistic
or vitalistic tradition which in fact he held in abhorrence."
This correction allows us to see Lamarck as a key figure in and of his time—
an age as rife with intellectual, as with political, ferment—and not as a painfully
peripheral, and actively marginalized, oddball. In a meticulous analysis of French
scientific thought, Corsi (1988) has placed Lamarck's views firmly amidst the
debates of his age, and also demonstrated that his theories were not so ignored or
ridiculed as tradition maintains.
I am not arguing that Lamarck was popular in his day, only that he was
contemporary. In many ways, Lamarck became his own worst enemy, and he owed
his fall from favor towards obscurity as much to his own unfortunate habits as to
the peculiarity of his ideas. He possessed no political skills, and could only fare
badly in any match with the masterful Cuvier (in an age that must rank as the best
and the worst of all political times). He continued to practice the old style of
speculative system building in an increasingly empirical climate. He was
combative, and so self-assured, that affirmation without any documentation
became his principal style of argument. Consider this claim for use and disuse
from the Philosophie zoologique (1809, 1984 edition, p. 108): "Nothing of all this
can be considered as hypothesis or private opinion; on the contrary, they are truths
which, in order to be made clear, only require attention and the observation of
facts." Lamarck's certainty extended even to the maximally dubious subject of
weather forecasting: "I am not submitting an opinion, but announcing a fact. I am
indicating an order of