In ancient times, the origin of life and evolution were not major issues: spontaneous generation of simple forms of life from matter was common belief, as was their transformation into other forms.

  
 
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From Volume Three (in French)
pp. 160-166 and 176-182 		 
 
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volume II, 1810, pp. 284-288

  

 
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volume 1, pp. 195-212 (in French)		  
 
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Excerpt, pp 323-327 (in French)





  

 
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volume 5, pp. 388-399 (in French)

  
 
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From volume 4, pp 24-39 (in French)

  
 
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From volume 1, 1815
Histoire Naturelle
des Animaux sans Vertèbres (in French)

Read Philosophie Zoologique at lamarck.net
  

 
  French translation of the Origin of Species on Gallica (in French)
(Downloadable as PDF file) 		 
 
   
    Towards the end of the 18th century , scientists including Erasmus DARWIN (1731-1802) in England, Alberto FORTIS (1741-1803) in Italy, and Jean-Claude de la METHERIE (1743-1817), Philippe BERTRAND (1730-1811), Eugène-Melchior-Louis PATRIN (1742-1815) and Bernard-Germain-Etienne de LACEPEDE (1756-1825) in France suggested that living organisms could have changed gradually along with changes in the earth's crust - at the same time refusing to endorse similar doctrines formulated in philosophical novels such as Benoit de Maillet's Telliamed.  
   
   

Jean-Baptiste LAMARCK (1744-1829) was the first to put forward a theory describing the spontaneous generation of the simplest forms of plant and animal life, then the progressive development of species leading up to the emergence of human beings with their intellectual faculties.
Lamarck's books spread his ideas across Europe: Philosophie zoologique (Zoological Philosophy) (1809), and, most importantly l'Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (A Natural History of Invertebrates) (volume I, 1815).

  
   
    In the social and cultural context of Europe in the age of the industrial revolution, the subject was ideologically and politically controversial: theories of evolution were considered subversive by upholders of the Christian tradition and the established order.
This explains the extreme caution displayed by Charles DARWIN (1809-1882) in 1859 when he presented the results of 20 years of research in his masterpiece, The Origin of Species.
Despite the success of the book, Darwin's theory of natural selection as the basis for evolution was widely criticized by naturalists and intellectuals. Proponents of a return to the ideas of Lamarck were heard in Western Europe, the United States and Russia. 		 
   
    The beginnings of modern genetics and experimental biology in the late 19th and early 20th century cast a temporary shadow over Darwinism and other theories of evolution, often dismissed as philosophical speculation rather than science.  
   
    But from the 1930s on, geneticists, taxonomists, paleontologists and naturalists showed that the theory of natural selection was compatible with the findings of scientific experimentation and observation, leading to the development of what Julian Huxley called "the Modern Synthesis".  
   
  In the second half of the 20th century, the scope of research into evolution expanded to embrace practically every area of biological science.  
   
>>> Link to lamarck.net

For more information, contact:
Pietro Corsi : pcorsi@univ-paris1.fr

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