Species Transformation and Social Reform: The Politics and Biopolitics of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Evolutionary Theory

Abstract

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) 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, 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; however, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. In this dissertation I seek to address this gap. I examine Lamarck’s comments on human intelligence, physiology, and moral agency, and place them in the context of prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation. I show how Lamarckian ideas about biological melioration—particularly in relation to social and political reform—served as both an aspirational standard and as rhetorical fodder for physicians, hygienists, and public health reformers throughout the nineteenth century who adapted evolutionary ideas into justifications for the primacy of medical authority in societal reform and regeneration. Even amongst those who were not prepared to embrace the idea that evolution was the mechanism of speciation, it was widely accepted that living organisms displayed a remarkable level of plasticity in their physiology and morphology, and that altering them physically could have far-reaching effects on functioning, social behavior, and overall wellbeing. This conviction was at the root of what would, over the course of the nineteenth century, give rise to various efforts to create a reformed and regenerated France by improving its people, including through hygienic reform, medical interventions, and the management of various pathologies that were believed to be hereditary, including ‘degeneration.’ In short, Lamarckian biology played a major role in what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics, including in its eugenic aspects. Thus, I argue that Lamarckian biology should be evaluated not just as a pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory, but as a contribution to ongoing debates about the importance and possibility of effecting political change via medico-biological management and alteration of the human body and species.