Renowned for his geological studies, Jean-Baptiste d'Omalius d'Halloy also pursued a far less known anthropological career. In different ‘editions’ of his main work, the first Belgian armchair anthropologist tried to divide the world population into races, branches, families and peoples. As a true figure of transition between the 18th and 19th century, he used both human and natural sciences to establish his racial classification, based on natural characters and geography, but also evolution, history and language. Influenced by both William Frederic (...) Edwards and Paul Broca, d'Omalius often defended polygenist views, despite his catholic and monogenist conviction and his refusal to accept the multiple origin of humankind. It is also notable that d'Omalius, like Tacitus and Montesquieu before him, claimed that the sole origin of humankind could to be situated in Northern European, which for d'Omalius still represented the homeland of the most civilized races. Critical of the ‘Aryan myth’, he stated that ‘Germanic’ culture and language had spread over Asia and not the other way around, an argument that caused conflict within learned societies and at international conferences. For the first time, based on new archival material, this article offers an overview of Belgian anthropology before the creation of Société d'Anthropologie de Bruxelles in 1882. (shrink)

In the space of four years, from 1826 to 1829, the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal published three anonymous articles seemingly advocating doctrines inspired by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Decades of scholarship have initially attributed the most outspoken of the three articles, the 1826 “Observations on the Nature and Importance of Geology,” to Robert Grant, and subsequently to Robert Jameson, thanks to a critical reassessment by James Secord. More recently, scholars have also ascribed to Jameson an article published in 1829, “Of the Continuity (...) of the Animal Kingdom by Means of Generation from the First Ages of the World to the Present Times.” A third short contribution, the 1827 “Of the Changes which Life has Experienced on the Globe” has been credited to the Franco-German Ami Boué. Research undertaken over several years has led to the identification of the three authors hiding behind the veil of anonymity. They were not the ones scholars have agreed upon, nor were they really “Lamarckians.” The discussion of the ways in which the three texts reached Edinburgh broadens our understanding of the daily working practices of contemporary periodicals and of the networks of circulation of texts at the Continental level. Finally, when considered within their proper conceptual and social context, the three articles throw light on the many ways in which, during the 1820s, European amateurs, naturalists, and journalists debated the succession of life forms throughout the history of the Earth. (shrink)

Alexander Moritzi is one of the most obscure figures in the early history of evolutionary thought. Best known for authoring a flora of Switzerland, Moritzi also published Réflexions sur l’espèce en histoire naturelle, a remarkable book about evolution with an overtly materialist viewpoint. In this work, Moritzi argues that the generally accepted line between species and varieties is artificial, that varieties can over time give rise to new species, and that deep time and turnover of species in the fossil record (...) clearly support an evolutionary interpretation of biological diversity. Moritzi was also a gradualist and viewed relationships between taxa as best represented by a ramifying tree. Although Réflexions was the first full book to be written on the topic of evolution following Lamarck’s Philosophie zoologique, Moritzi’s evolutionist contribution was stillborn, read by almost no one in his lifetime and ultimately absent from the many historiographies of evolutionary thought. This is unfortunate since many of the arguments Moritzi marshaled on behalf of an evolutionary explanation of life can be found in subsequent transmutationist writings by Frédéric Gérard, Robert Chambers, Henri Lecoq, Baden Powell, Charles Naudin, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Charles Darwin—none of whom is likely to have ever known of the existence of Réflexions. Finally, Moritzi’s arguments, along with those found in Darwin’s private essay on evolution of the same year, provide an excellent window into the state of evolutionary thought and debate over the nature of species at the beginning of the 1840s. (shrink)