Alchemy and Catastrophe
Lamarck and Cuvier in Natural History
Numerous researchers have contributed to the natural sciences, especially in the past few centuries. However, far from infallible or exhaustive, these researchers’ discoveries have been incremental, and their theoretical frameworks have been tried through both peer review and social upheaval. In this vein, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier — academics, naturalists, and rivals — are illustrative. This essay will explore Lamarck and Cuvier’s contributions to the field of natural history: their respective discoveries, their disagreements with one another, and their mistakes.
A “thoroughgoing deist” (Moore, p. 344), Lamarck proposed that change in organisms is affected by two forces: an alchemical process naturally driving organisms into ever greater complexity and environmental circumstances that shape that emergent complexity (Gould, 2002). An organism’s use and disuse of its various “organs” was the mechanism by which this evolution occurred, according to Lamarck. Over the course of one generation to the next, organisms would use the parts of their bodies in progressively more efficient ways to meet their needs within the constraints of their environment. As its various functions became more precise, an organism’s form would gradually change, acquired traits which that organism would then pass on through…
