Immortal Curiosity

Notes on Zoological Philosophy, by J.B. Lamarck-

Chapter 7-

• Concerning the influence exerted by the environment on the various living bodies exposed to it. It is in all times and places operative on living bodies.
• The state in which we find any animal is, on the one hand, the result of the increasing complexity of organisation tending to form a regular gradation; and, on the other hand, of the influence of a multitude of very various conditions ever tending to destroy the regularity in the gradation of the increasing complexity of organisation.
• It is only by an inspection of ancient monuments that he becomes convinced that in each of these localities the order of things which he now finds has not always been existent; he may thence infer that it will go on changing.
• First Law of Nature:
  • In animals not past the limit of development, more use of an organ strengthens and develops that organ, while disuse weakens the organ until it disappears.
• Second Law of Nature:
  • All acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise.
• If an environment were constant, Lamarck would say that no changes would occur within species, while Darwin would say it would be possible for these changes to occur. Darwin proposes that random changes occur, and, if beneficial, spread. Thus there never is a constant species, even if the environment were fixed.
• Lamarck’s problem seems to be that he is very unclear about distinguishing the individual and the species. Changes occurring to one may not pass to the other and vice versa.
• Habits form a second nature.
• Mammals are the most perfect animals.
• When the will guides an animal to any action, the organs which have to carry out that action are immediately stimulated to it by the influx of subtle fluids (the nervous fluid).
• Is there any limit to the developmental space of biological possibility?
• Nature in creating of animals, foresaw all the possible kinds of environment in which they would have to live, and endowed each species with a fixed organisation and with a definite and invariable shape.
• Nature has produced all the species of animals in succession, beginning with the most imperfect or simplest, and ending her work with the most perfect, so as to create a gradually increasing complexity in their organisation.