From straker@unixg.ubc.ca Sat Jun 3 13:05:05 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id NAA14630 for ; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 13:05:05 -0700 Received: from mail.interchange.ubc.ca (mail.interchange.ubc.ca [137.82.27.15]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id NAA21158 for ; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 13:05:04 -0700 Received: from p037.intchg2.net.ubc.ca ([207.23.94.165] helo=unixg.ubc.ca) by mail.interchange.ubc.ca with esmtp (Exim 3.03 #1) id 12yKAJ-0002Nh-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sat, 03 Jun 2000 13:05:03 -0700 Message-ID: <39395BEB.8A305D68@unixg.ubc.ca> Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 12:26:36 -0700 From: Stephen Straker X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: TAN: The Unknown Mr. Denton - Lamarckian Evolutionist? References: <001d01bfcd68$858f09e0$5d509318@ne.mediaone.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit P. T. Rourke wrote: > Denton upheld ... the proposition that "Man, animals and vegetables > came into existence by the operation of the laws of spontaneous > generation and progressive development, and there is no evidence that > there was ever any exertion of direct creative power on this planet." > Smith comments that "it may be doubted if any single event in his > career had a more important effect. He had held his own for five days > against a practiced antagonist and had learned his own powers." Yes, this most definitely refers to Lamarckian ideas -- see Lamarck's _Zoological Philosophy_ for a clear and definitive statement in the early sections. This early 19th Century debate was seen as so significant because Lamarck was widely (and correctly) understood to have advanced a *materialist* conception of a progressively evolving world of living things in which the powers of "generation and progressive development" inhere in the material structures of organisms themselves. We do not require a conception of a providential (divine) creator to explain or understand the diverse world of livng things or the relations between them: rather than a "Great Chain of Being," for Lamarck there is what you might call an "Escalator of Being" in which organisms are *continually* generating out of slime and (physiologically) transforming themselves in response to environmental stress from one kind of organism to another right up the ladder. The slug you see today will have as *very distant* descendants a mouse then a monkey then a human being. Thus, I suspect, Garfield is being protrayed and praised as someone who could defend a traditional understanding of God and His Creation against irreligious (French) materialism. Thus, debates about evolution and its significance antedate Charles Darwin by several generations. Indeed, one of the more famous Larmarckians is Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Stephen Straker History / UBC Vancouver .