Seeds of Hierarchy 179
used the word besoins) left Lamarck open to charges of mystical vitalism when
distorted for rhetorical purposes by Cuvier, or approached with overwrought
caution by Darwin. One might caricature this part of Lamarck's system by saying
that a giraffe felt a need for a long neck, stretched ever so hard, and then passed the
results of these successful efforts directly to offspring. But a fair assessment of
Lamarck's actual words shows that he advocated no ineffable willing, but only the
commonplace idea that a change in environment can, in an almost mechanical way,
elicit an organic response in terms of altered habits: "Variations in the environment
induce changes in the needs, habits, and mode of life of living beings... these
changes give rise to modifications or developments in their organs and the shape of
their parts" (1809, p. 45).
This first set of Lamarckian ideas contains nothing that should have offended
Darwin, while several points embody the deeper functionalist and adaptationist
spirit of the Darwinian view of life. Darwin did not grant such crucial emphasis to
soft inheritance, although he accepted the principles of use and disuse and
inheritance of acquired characters, and he awarded them a subsidiary role in his
own theory. But two key items in this first set might be designated as decidedly
Darwinian in spirit, if only because they advance and presage two of the half dozen
most important ideas in Darwin's theory: the uniformity of environmental change,
- and the functionalist first principle that change of habit sets the pathway to
altered form. The mechanisms of change differ to be sure—altered habits establish
new selection pressures for Darwin, but induce heritable modifications more
directly for Lamarck—but both thinkers share a functionalist commitment.
I would argue that the structuralist-functionalist dichotomy precedes any
particular theory of mechanism within either camp. Thus, we may view Lamarck
and Darwin as occupying the common ground of functionalism, with their
differing mechanisms of natural selection and soft inheritance as versions of the
same deeper commitment. Therefore, if Lamarckism only encompassed this first
set of ideas, we might interpret Lamarck as the inception of a smooth transition to
Darwin. But Lamarckism also includes a second set of concepts, which, when
combined with the first set into Lamarck's full system, builds an evolutionary
theory truly opposed to Darwin's chief theoretical concept and operational
principle as well.
The second set: progress and taxonomy
The first set, by itself, leads to a logical dilemma for Lamarck's view of life and his
professional commitments. Adaptation to changing local environments may be
well explained, but Lamarck's truly ahistorical uniformitarian-ism implies that life
can manifest no progress, or no linear order at all, if adaptation matches creatures
to an environmental history without direction.
*Lamarck's commitment to gradualism as a general philosophy matched Darwin's in
centrality and strength, thus forging a connection deeper than a shared attitude toward en-
vironment alone. Lamarck wrote (1809, p. 46): "Consider... that in all nature's works
nothing is done abruptly, but that she acts everywhere slowly and by successive stages."