174 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
things that anyone can verify through observation" (in Corsi, 1988, p. 59). The old
story that Napoleon refused a copy of Lamarck's Philosophie zoologique is
apparently true (unlike most legends in the history of science). But Napoleon's
motive has not generally been recognized: he mistook the nature of the gift,
thinking that he had been offered one of Lamarck's discredited volumes of weather
predictions for the coming year!
LAMARCK AS A SOURCEThe preceding section on Lamarck as a man of his time may seem peripheral, if not
wholly out of place, in a chapter on hierarchical causation in evolutionary theory,
but this theme holds a definite place in the logic of my presentation. Such a diffuse
and comprehensive idea as evolution can claim no single initiator or unique
starting point. The search for precursors in ancient Greece, while overextended
(Osborn, 1894), rests upon a legitimate foundation. But Lamarck holds a special
place as the first to transcend footnote, peripheral commentary, and partial
commitment, and to formulate a consistent and comprehensive evolutionary
theory—in Corsi's words (1988, p. xi) "the first major evolutionist synthesis in
modern biology."
Moreover, even in a book parochially skewed to British and American
evolutionary theory, Lamarck still merits the status of an ultimate source. German
and French biologists could cite a variety of references from their indigenous
movements of Naturphilosophie (Oken, Meckel, or Goethe himself, for example)
and the revolutionary times of the Age of Reason (Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot,
and a host of largely forgotten Enlightenment figures). England could boast a few
precursors (including Darwin's grandfather Erasmus), but no strong movements.
Ironically, as Darwin, Wallace, and all the great mid-century evolutionists
acknowledged, Lamarck instigated both major treatments of evolutionary thought
in English before 1859: first, the accurate and extensive, if negative, presentation
of Lamarck's system by Charles Lyell in the first four chapters of The Principles of
Geology, Volume 2 (1832); and second, the anonymously published (1844)
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. The author of that scandalous and
widely debated book, the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers, acknowledged
Lamarck, via Lyell, as his major source of inspiration.
I have (see Chapter 1) rejected Hull's genealogical approach to the definition
of theories, but I certainly defend this criterion (almost tautologically, I suppose)
for the tracing of influences. Of Lamarck's foundational impact on English
evolutionary thought, Hull (1985, p. 803) writes: "Darwin first confronted a
detailed explication of the species problem in the context of Lyell's refutation of
Lamarck in his Principles of Geology... Others like Spencer and Chambers were
converted by reading Lyell's refutation of Lamarck; still others like Wallace and
Powell were led to entertain the possibility of evolution by reading Chambers." We
cannot, in short, view Lamarck as an oddity, cast aside by his own contemporaries,
and irrelevant except as a whipping boy ever since. And we must acknowledge that
Lamarckism, properly defined, forms a coherent and innovative system in the
context of its own time.