Pierre Trémaux’s 1865 ideas on speciation have been unjustly derided following his acceptance by Marx and rejection by Engels, and almost nobody has read his ideas in a charitable light. Here we offer an interpretation based on translating the term sol as “habitat”, in order to show that Trémaux proposed a theory of allopatric speciation before Wagner and a punctuated equilibrium theory before Gould and Eldredge, and translate the relevant discussion from the French. We believe he may have influenced Darwin’s (...) revision to the third edition of the Origin on rates of evolution, and suggest that Gould’s dismissal of Trémaux is motivated by concern that others might think punctuated equilibrium theory was tainted by a connection with Trémaux. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain why, while Charles Darwin was well recognized as a scientific leader of his time, Claude Bernard never really regarded Darwinism as a scientific theory. The lukewarm reception of Darwin at the Académie des Sciences of Paris and his nomination to a chair only after 8 years contrasts with his prominence, and Bernard’s attitude towards Darwin’s theory of species evolution belongs to this French context. Yet we argue that Bernard rejects the scientific value (...) of Darwinian principles mainly for epistemological reasons. Like Darwin, Bernard was interested in hereditary processes, and planned to conduct experiments on these processes that could lead to species transformation. But the potential creation of new forms of life would not vindicate Darwinism since biologists can only explain the origin of morphotypes and morphological laws by the means of untestable analogies. Because it can be the object neither of experiments nor of any empirical observation, phylogeny remains out of science’s scope. Around 1878 Bernard foresaw a new general physiology based on the study of protoplasm, which he saw as the agent of all basic living phenomena. We will analyze why Bernard regarded Darwinism as part of metaphysics, yet still referred to Darwinians in his latter works in 1878. Basically, the absence of a scientific reception of Darwinism in Bernard's work should not obscure its philosophical reception, which highlights the main principles of Bernard’s epistemology. (shrink)

This article reconstructs French readings and debates of German approaches to Vlkerpsychologie was a symptomatic approach during a transformative period in German, and indeed European, intellectual history: based on the idea of progressand on the belief in the primordial importance of the Volk, it represented the mindset of in an almost pure form. The relevance and importance of Vlkerpsychologie was not restricted to German academics: it was in France where central elements of VThlestin Bougle, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mausssocial sciencelkerpsychologie (...) was not a German oddity, but an integral part of the debates that led to the establishing of the modern social sciences, as its French reception shows. (shrink)

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his ‘Lamarckian’ belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young’s signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to (...) place Darwin’s work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck’s social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck’s ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation. (shrink)

While French biologists were turning a cold shoulder to On the Origin of Species in the 1860s, Charles Darwin was earnestly pursuing a professional connection with one French physiologist in particular: Charles Brown-Séquard. Darwin had been closely following Brown-Séquard’s startling experiments on guinea pigs, which demonstrated that experimentally induced epilepsy could pass from parent to offspring. In Darwin’s mind, Brown-Séquard had produced the most convincing evidence to date that acquired traits could be inherited. Darwin saw opportunities in Brown-Séquard and his (...) work. If Brown-Séquard realized the evolutionary implications of his experiments, and then endorsed the Origin in Paris, Darwin could be well on his way to securing a French audience for his theories. Darwin quickly mobilized his powers of correspondence to make this French connection, but Brown-Séquard received Darwin’s advances with caution. A connection with Darwin could be useful in London and America, where he was increasingly spending time, but to publicly support Darwin would be professionally damaging back home in Paris. This paper examines the dance of letters between Darwin and Brown-Séquard, the politics of citation, and the delicacy of sustaining a transnational biological career between France and Britain in the 1860s. This paper casts a new perspective on an old debate in the history of biology. I show that from within the “heavy cloud” of anti-evolutionary thought in France, there existed a live wire between Brown-Séquard and Darwin. I argue that British evolutionary theory in the age of Darwin was built, in part, with French participation. (shrink)