Darwin and Lamarck

The participants in the anniversary celebrations frequently compared Darwin and Lamarck. Published in a Russian translation in 1910, Haeckel's essay "The World View of Darwin and Lamarck" stimulated a lively and sustained discussion of the place of Lamarck in the pre-Darwinian evolutionary tradition. Haeckel considered Lamarck Darwin's truest and most formidable predecessor: both were thorough, consistent, and categorical in claiming that only natural causes can solve the riddle of evolution. Lamarck's theory of evolution generated little enthusiasm: its labyrinthine structure could not find support in the empirical data available at the time. Lamarck asked more questions than science was ready to answer. Darwin, by contrast, was eminently successful because the rapid accumulation of empirical information invited and made possible a serious concern with the theory of evolution. Darwin succeeded because he answered all the basic questions he undertook to answer.

Haeckel helped reinforce the view of Lamarck as a central link in the chain of developments that culminated in the appearance of the Origin of Species . His intent was to recognize the great historical value of Zoological Philosophy without taking anything away from the Origin of Species . Darwin, he said, did not negate Lamarck's work but carried it to a successful completion. The intent of Haeckel's address was not only to pay respect to the French scientist on an important anniversary but also to fight the rising tide of neo-Lamarckism, a heresy that considered Darwin guilty of digressing from the evolutionary path Lamarck had taken and that pleaded for a return to Lamarck's original thought. By praising Lamarck, Haeckel was protecting the interests of Darwinism.

Ieronim Iasinskii, a popular writer with a long list of publications, honored not only the Darwinian commemoration but also the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Lamarck's classic Zoological Philosophy . In "Darwin and Lamarck," published in the journal New Word, he relied on Félix Le Dantec, the well-known French scholar who combined a profound involvement in evolutionary physiology with a strong flair for philosophy. Le Dantec recommended a combination of the idea of evolution as a random process, Darwin's main concern, with the idea of evolution as a universal law of nature, the center of Lamarck's attention. Iasinskii recommended the search for regularities hidden behind the random occurrence of variation in plants and animals. In other words, he, too, recommended a synthesis of Lamarckian and Darwinian approaches to organic evolution. Although Darwin's pangenesis, a unique search for universal regularities in the living universe, did not lead to a formulation of empirically verifiable laws of nature, it was a solid move in the right direction. While the full development of evolutionary theory belonged to the future, "the basic principles built into the great Darwinian theory of the origin of species" will continue to be as "unassailable" as the laws of Kepler and Newton.^[37] Implicit in Iasinskii's argument were two ideas: first, the future of evolutionary theory lay in building upon Darwinian foundations; and second, the future of Darwin's theory lay in closer cooperation with the Lamarckian tradition. In making his plea, Iasinskii, like Haeckel, referred to Lamarck, not to various branches of neo-Lamarckists.

Speaking at a session of the Twelfth Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians at the very end of 1909, V. I. Taliev found a new task for Darwinism: to serve as a conciliatory force between the extreme positions of renewed Lamarckism and the mutation theory, the former stressing the primacy of environment as a factor of evolution and the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the latter minimizing the evolutionary role of environment and rejecting the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He believed in the possibility of bringing the contradictory evolutionary theories under one roof, but he argued that the new unity could be forged under the auspices, and through the well-established intellectual equipment, of Darwin's theory.

The zoopsychologist Vladimir Vagner presented a unique and rather amusing comparison of Darwin and Lamarck.^[38] In terms of their scientific work, the two men, he wrote, were more similar than dissimilar. They relied on essentially the same general views of organic nature and arrived at basically the same evolutionary conclusions. Despite these

similarities, they represented two distinct kinds of scholars. Darwin was a strict empiricist, operating within a relatively narrow but carefully and precisely delimited framework. Lamarck, by contrast, had a mind prone to speculation unrestrained by empirical considerations and constantly searching for answers to problems of universal significance. Darwin allowed science to set the limits to his generalizations; Lamarck depended on philosophical imagination when the facts of science happened to be in short supply. Vagner expressed a firm conviction that evolutionary biology was so much richer because of striking differences in the mental makeup, temperament, and style of work of its two most eminent architects. The evolutionary theory achieved great victories because Lamarck was a philosopher in science and Darwin was a scientist in philosophy.

In a lengthy essay published in Russian Wealth in 1910, V. V. Lunkevich compared Darwinism with Lamarckism and mutationism. He noted that various branches of neo-Lamarckism, particularly of a "psychological" variety, did not have much in common with Lamarck's scientific legacy: unlike true Lamarckists, they violated the modes and canons of scientific reasoning and verification and allowed themselves to sink in the morass of metaphysical elaborations. Relying heavily on the address Delage had delivered in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of Lamarck in celebration of the centennial of Philosophie zoologique, he noted that, despite their basic differences, the theories of Lamarck and Darwin mutually reinforced each other. He also added that, had Lamarck lived in the twentieth century, he would most probably have accepted Darwin's idea of transformation.^[39]

Most biologists who commented on the theoretical views of the two illustrious celebrants treated Lamarck's ideas as integral parts of the Darwinian evolutionary framework. P. F. Lesgaft represented a small group of biologists who took an opposite position: he thought that Lamarck's theory was more advanced and more general than any other theory, including Darwin's. In a polemical article published in 1909 in connection with the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Philosophie zoologique, Lesgaft gave a forthright expression to his evaluation of the two theories. In comparison with Darwin's views, he thought that Lamarck placed a stronger and more explicit emphasis on the unity of inorganic and organic nature.^[40] He created a more solid basis for making biology an integral part of Newtonian science. By recognizing spontaneous generation, Lamarck linked the theory of the origin of life with the theory of organic evolution.