Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and WorkPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
History
Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Evolution (Biology); Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, 1744-1829; Naturalists -- France -- Biography
It is curious, also, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin went at least as far as
Lamarck in claiming that the transformations of animals "are in part
produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and
aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or of
associations."
Cope, in the final chapter of his _Primary Factors of Organic
Evolution_, entitled "The Functions of Consciousness," goes to much
farther extremes than the French philosopher has been accused of doing,
and unhesitatingly attributes consciousness to all animals. "Whatever be
its nature," he says, "the preliminary to any animal movement which is
not automatic is an effort." Hence he regards effort as the immediate
source of all movement, and considers that the control of muscular
movements by consciousness is distinctly observable; in fact, he even
goes to the length of affirming that reflex acts are the product of
conscious acts, whereas it is plain enough that reflex acts are always
the result of some stimulus.
Another case mentioned by Lamarck in his _Animaux sans Vertèbres_, which
has been pronounced as absurd and ridiculous, and has aided in throwing
his whole theory into disfavor, is his way of accounting for the
development of the tentacles of the snail, which is quoted on p. 348.
This account is a very probable and, in fact, the only rational
explanation. The initial cause of such structures is the intermittent
stimulus of occasional contact with surrounding objects, the irritation
thus set up causing a flow of the blood to the exposed parts receiving
the stimuli. The general cause is the same as that concerned in the
production of horns and other hard defensive projections on the heads of
various animals.
In commenting on this case of the snail, Professor Cleland, in his just
and discriminating article on Lamarck, says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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