Mice with extraordinary mental powers. A toad with painted feet. A ladder of life. A tree of life. An escalator of life. Battlefield valor and academic skullduggery. Racism. More Racism. You may not recognize all the players, but they're all part of the story of evolution as it's understood by most people around the world. The story of how everyone gets it so desperately wrong.
In 1826 a professor from the medical school at the University of Edinburgh penned a glowing letter. The professor had studied not only human anatomy, but the the organs, muscles, nerves, and bones of other organisms as well as the fossil record. Again and again he had found similar structures among creatures that, on the surface, appeared radically different. He saw clearly enough that these anatomical features could be used to group animals, to find relationships that weren't immediately obvious, and to place a structure around all of life — but the shape of that structure was not quite clear. So it wasn't surprising that the professor were excited to encounter a theory that filled in the blank spots in the map of life. He was familiar with medieval concepts like "the great chain of life," and he had followed the debates in "natural theology," but no other theory explained so well the shared anatomy he saw in both living and fossil creatures. The theory that generated such enthusiasm showed how every creature had come from the same, simple origins. It explained how all life was bound by the same rules. It showed how all animals — from worms to men — were related by the same process of evolution.
That a professor with an interest in geology and zoology was excited about evolution might not seem worth mentioning, except for the fact that Charles Darwin's theories on natural selection would not be published for over three decades. In fact, Darwin was then a sixteen year-old student, still years away from his voyage on the Beagle. But then, the professor wasn’t writing to Darwin. His praise was directed at a retired, eighty-two year old, French military officer and scientist, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck, more commonly known as Lamarck.
As a youth, Lamarck had left university, ridden hard to the battle front, and joined the French Army in what amounted to the European theater of the conflict that in America was known as the French and Indian War (tell the truth: did you even know that there was a European theater of the French and Indian War?). The unit to which Lamarck was assigned almost immediately came under a heavy artillery barrage that killed most of the men in the unit — including all the officers. The other volunteers begged Lamarck, the son of an aristocrat, to accept command of the unit and order their retreat. The seventeen year-old Lamarck took command, but instead of retreat he ordered that they hold their position no matter what. They held. The tattered remains of the unit survived the day, and afterwards Lamarck was given a battlefield promotion to officer ranks.
Lamarck was uninjured in the fighting, but the celebration nearly killed him. In the aftermath of his promotion, one of his comrades gave the new officer a congratulation so hardy that it landed Lamarck in the hospital for weeks (you have to suspect that the death-grip hug came from one of the guys Lamarck ordered to stay on the field). Afterwards Lamarck was given a desk job. His battlefield heroics began and ended on the same day.
On leaving the army Lamarck studied medicine, botany, and anything else that captured his energetic mind. The enthusiastic young man soon came to the attention of the French Academy of Science, and within a few years he was traveling the world, collecting plants for the royal gardens. Year after year, Lamarck gained in rank and prestige. By the time the French Revolution came along, he was in charge of a portion of the royal gardens (which he deftly renamed when "royal" no longer became so healthy). Lamarck not only survived the revolution, but thrived, becoming a professor of natural history and a curator of the new natural history museum.
By 1800, Lamarck was fifty-five years old. He was well known, an acknowledged expert in botany, zoology, and all aspects of natural history. He was charming. He had friends in high places. He enjoyed a level of respect that rivaled that of his countryman and rival, Georges Cuvier. But for all his vaunted knowledge, Lamarck had still published almost nothing. That was about to change.
In three year period Lamarck overthrew the existing classification of animals and set up many of the groups we know today. He created a system of geology that included a form of continental drift (which Lamarck thought was caused by the effects of erosion and deposition from ocean currents). He introduced the term "biology" for the general study of living systems. And he outlined his ideas for the evolution of all life from common ancestors.
Lamarck's theory of evolution filled the gap that was created when people realized that extinction had swept away whole orders of beings, and yet the world still held abundant and diverse of life. Earth didn't contain the same mix of creatures it had held in the past, but the roles those extinct creatures had once played were now held by new organisms. Animals had adapted. Evolution had occurred. But how? Lamarck wasn't the only one writing about the issue (Charles Darwin's grandfather was one of those who had speculated on evolution some years earlier), but Lamarck was the first to provide a systematic answer.
Observing that the oldest rocks contained only simple organisms, Lamarck inferred that there was a force which compelled life to grow more complex over time. As a mechanism for this force, Lamarck proposed that the high pressure fluids circulating through the body (blood, lymph, etc) were constantly forging new paths, and that this led to the formation of new organs. Organs and tissues that were getting a lot of use were also getting more fluid, so it was these areas most likely to be affected by this increase in complexity (And yes, that part about the fluids does sound a little silly now, and probably did then. Certainly it’s not cited by many of Lamarck’s admirers).
Seeing the way that animals were well-suited their environment, Lamarck postulated that another force split species to make them more suitable for differing circumstances. Lamarck viewed this force in a way that any gym rat would recognize as an extended version of "use it or lose it."
If an animal hasn't reached the limits of development, frequent use of any organ will strengthen, develop and enlarge that organ, with development matching the amount of use. Not using any organ gradually weakens it, diminishes its function, and finally causes it to disappear.
Spend your time pumping iron, you get muscles. Spend that same time at a desk, and you get (or at least, I get) more gut than biceps.
Lamarck theorized that these adaptations, acquired through a life of using body parts more or less, were passed along to children. So your efforts in the gym — or the library — would give your children a head start. This part of his theory his contemporaries liked. This part they liked very much.
The evolutionary theory that Lamarck introduced in 1800 (and expounded on over the next two decades) provided everything you could possible want in a theory — especially if you were intelligent, healthy, wealthy, and well-placed in society. Here was a proposal that said there was a drive toward more complex, "improved" organisms and that achievements of all sorts were passed along to children. So if you happened to be reading his theories in the large, warm library of a well-appointed home, wasn't it because your ancestors had bequeathed you not only their bank accounts but the physical and mental advantages they had labored hard to attain? Wasn't any elevation above the mean deserved? And didn't this prove that those of the lower class — the unlovely, unhealthy, uneducated, and most certainly unwealthy masses — were in that state precisely because their ancestors had failed to put in the accumulated work to lift their lot? Class wasn't just a position, it was an accomplishment. Lamarck himself was never too keen on the broad application of his theory, but that didn't halt its popularity. By the middle of the nineteenth century, this you-have-what-you-deserve view of evolution was being applied not only to biology, but in all fields including economics and sociology.
The greatest champion of this general application was a young editor for The Economist, Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a member of a family that seemed to be chockablock was radical ideas, commercial success, and brilliance. He dabbled in half a dozen fields, from engineering to medicine, before taking up his pen as an advocate of free trade. His 1851 book, Social Statics wove together laissez-faire economics, sociology, and Spencer's take on Lamarckian evolution. In his view evolution was not only improving the human species generation by generation, but also adapting it to live in a modern mercantile society. There was only one impediment to this continuing improvement — government. Government not only retarded man's progress, but the need for government was fading quickly as man became adapted to the benefits of the market economy. Grover Norquist would have loved him (In fact, Spencer still has a strong following among certain stripes of free-marketeers who like to read his early down-with-the-state positions, and ignore his later give-me-a-more-powerful-state phase).
Spencer swerved into the area of psychology in his next book, arguing that not just intelligence but modes of thought and ideas could be passed along to children by exercising certain areas of the brain. This may seem a large departure from economics, but Spencer was seeking a "universal law," a sort of Grand Unified Theory, that would describe the behavior of everything from atoms to markets. Over the next six years, he developed this system and presented an overview in Progress: Its Law and Cause. In this essay Spencer elaborated on his theory of evolution, arguing that not just life but all structures in the universe had come form some undifferentiated, formless origin (not quite a Big Bang, more of a Big Soup). He expanded Lamarck's idea of evolution into a role that was almost godlike — driving everything toward, if not perfection, at least improvement. When it came to how this rule worked in biological systems, Spencer embraced Lamarck's use-it-to-improve-it concept.
By the time On the Origin of Species appeared at the end of 1859, Herbert Spencer was the most popular philosopher in England, but he was a philosopher with a problem. While Spencer's reworking of Lamarkian evolution and universal development might make for a good read, and fit well with preconceived notions of how the world ought to work, it was long on philosophy, short on evidence. On the other hand, Darwin had spent thirty years refining his ideas, thinking of arguments and counter-arguments, expanding on what his theory had to say about development, distribution, the changes seen in domesticated animals, the effects of climate, relationships between predator and prey, and much more. Darwin was one of those rare scientists who had the ability to put himself in the place of those who scoffed at his ideas, to argue against his own theory, and to provide a solid answer to those criticisms. He predicted many of the arguments skeptics would mount and tore them down step by step. There were then, and are now, those who doubt evolution, but for those who accepted the evidence found in the natural world, Darwin's theory was clearly superior to previous efforts. His book was an immediate hit.
Spencer soon saw that he would have to absorb Darwin's natural selection into his own theories, but he didn't like it. Not at all. His version of evolution was purpose-driven and rewarding of effort. Darwin's theory depended on change that was merely... change, not a prize for individual achievement. Worse, natural selection removed the concept of a direction to evolution. Creatures evolved to meet their environment, yes, and complexity might arise from this change, but there was no requirement that the change be in the direction of "general improvement." Darwin's theory literally upended everything Spencer had written.
If the universal rule that Spencer was still expanding on was going to survive the introduction of natural selection, it would have to do so by swallowing up Darwin's theory, and by making changes to his ideas at least as great as those Spencer had made to Lamarck. Where Darwin had presented the image of a branching bush as a way to visualize the evolution of species, Spencer preferred a ladder or an "escalator" propelling species toward improvement. The images most often presented of evolution for the next fifty years — those ladders or trees in which man is neatly ensconced at the apex — are based off Spencer's adaption of natural selection, not Darwin's original. Even the phrase most associated with Darwin's theories "the survival of the fittest" wasn't coined by Darwin. That was Herbert Spencer.
Spencer was far from the most toxic of those who mixed a little Darwin into a cocktail of classism. While Spencer's ever-expanding philosophy was gradually losing coherence over the decades, over on the continent, philosopher and physician Ernst Haeckel was pulling together his own take on evolution. Like Lamarck, Haekel restructured the classification of animals (giving us the terms phylum, phylogeny, and Protista), and like Lamarck he had his own theory of evolution based on the retention of acquired traits. Haeckel came to visit Darwin in 1866 and professed to be a follower of his theory, but if Haeckel ever actually took the time to study Darwin's writing on natural selection, he ignored much of what he read when it came time to put down his own ideas.
Nowhere is this more clear than in how the two looked at the development of man. In his writings, Darwin had made a clear case that all human beings currently living on the planet were of a single species, and that species had developed recently in Africa. Haeckel broke human beings into separate species, dividing them along lines of language groups. He theorized that each group of modern humans had evolved separately from speechless Urmenschen, and represented a collection of species with different “potential.” He didn't hesitate to put these species in order.
The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all the races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect... This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise men above the rest of nature.
So why did this racist son of a bitch, who discarded most of Darwin’s work (and most of world history) to make it fit better into his vision of European superiority and German Romanticism, become one of the best-selling writers on evolution, collect awards by the trunkful, and get a mountain in Nevada named after him? The reason was very simple. Darwin filled his book with page after page of facts and carefully built arguments. Heackel, who was a hell of an artist, loaded his book up with sweeping language and scads of beautiful illustrations.
Haeckel outsold Darwin year after year. His book was distributed in the United States up until the 1930s (the point at which championing people who droned on about the superiority of the German race became a bit less popular), and helped spread many misconceptions about what Darwin had written. "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” — the idea that an embryo in development goes through stages that match the evolutionary history of its species, and which was reproduced in many textbooks — was Haeckel, not Darwin.
Neo-Lamarckians were by no means limited to Europe or to the nineteenth century. In the 1920s, psychologist William McDougall of Harvard University was engaged in that activity that has been a staple of psychologists in films and folklore (and yes, in real life) for decades — running rats through mazes. But McDougall’s rats displayed a rather remarkable ability. After only a few dozen attempts, they were able to run the maze perfectly. Which might not seem too strange, except that it took the grandparents and great-grandparents of these rats almost ten times as long to run the route. What McDougall claimed to find was exactly what Spencer had predicted — the experience of the parents was being passed along to the children, and with each passing generation the rats were being born pre-programmed to complete the task. It was a result that fit in well with McDougall’s own version of behavior driven by inherited knowledge.
There certainly seemed to be some sort of Lamarckian process at work. Or at least, there did until other researchers showed that McDougall was being a bit too encouraging with his younger generation of rats. With stiffer controls on the experiment, the inherited skills of the maze runners disappeared. (McDougall was the author of his own error, but at about the same time he was herding rats, Austrian researcher Paul Kammerer was very excited to find that toads which had developed dark pads on their feet during life were giving birth to offspring with feet pre-blackened. It seemed direct proof of Lamarck-style inheritance, but turned out to be the work of a joker armed with India ink).
Like Heackel, McDougall didn’t hesitate to extend his ideas on evolution to ideas of race.
The few distinguished Negroes, so called, of America - such as Douglass, Booker Washington, Du Bois - have been, I believe, in all cases mulattoes or had some proportion of white blood.
With that kind of brilliance, perhaps it’s appropriate that McDougall left Harvard to help found the parapsychology department at Duke, where he spent the rest of his career trying to detect ESP and attempting to communicate with the dead. Unfortunately, that was after McDougall had published three popular books on his theories and taught hundreds of students.
In a neat bit of philosophical time traveling, what we know as "Social Darwinism" actually predates Darwin's writing by several years, and much of what we understand as Darwinism came from other sources, some writing decades later. Few of those who argue against the social effects of evolution realize that they have no argument with Charles Darwin. They should take their fight to the defenders of Howard Spencer, or Ernst Heackel, or William McDougall — if they can find any. Spencer in particular had a reach that’s impossible to overestimate. His work was woven in fiction as diverse as D. H. Lawrence and H. G. Wells (The Time Machine’s eloi and morlochs are based on extension of Spencer’s idea of human evolution). Social Statics was cited in legal decisions by Oliver Wendell Holmes as if it had the force of law. Spencer's works played a large part in shaping the government of Japan at the turn of the 20th century.
For Darwin's part, he was interested in the work of the “Social Darwinists”, and incorporated Spencer's spiffy “survival of the fittest” credo into later editions of Origin. However, Darwin was careful to show that his understanding of "fittest" was limited to best suited for the current local conditions, not Spencer's semi-mystical idea of growing perfection. And when it came to the races of man, Darwin himself had a position that certainly evolved over time. His position at the time of his later writing may seem enlightened, especially when compared to others of his day, but anyone reading his account of the Beagle voyage cannot avoid the clear (and often shocking) sense of superiority that Darwin felt when discussing the non-Europeans the ship encountered.
That attitude was probably even more true when that letter praising Lamarck was written back in 1826. As it happens, the young Darwin was a student of the Edinburgh professor who penned the letter, Robert Jameson. It was in Jameson’s classroom that Darwin was able to handle some of the professor’s vast collection of rocks, minerals, and fossils. In letters, Darwin confessed that he found Jameson’s lectures boring, but he must have paid good attention, because much of what he learned in that classroom came in handy in his explorations. Darwin might also have been paying particularly good attention during one of Jameson’s lectures on zoology. The one titled “Origin of the Species of Animals.”
(and yup, I've skated all around the idea of eugenics, which I promise to address in a later installment. Call it a matter of time and space -- it's after midnight, I have to be up in about 3 hours, and I'm close to the limit of how much stuff you can shove into a diary. Thanks for reading this far.)