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MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
The theory of evolution of the organic world. History and essence of scientific discovery
Directory / The most important scientific discoveries In 1909, there was a great celebration in Paris: a monument to the great French naturalist was opened Jean Baptiste Lamarck in commemoration of the centenary of the publication of his famous work "Philosophy of Zoology". One of the bas-reliefs of this monument depicts a touching scene: a blind old man sits in an armchair in a sad pose - this is Lamarck himself, who lost his sight in old age, and a young girl stands nearby - his daughter, who consoles her father and addresses him with the words: "Your offspring will admire you, my father, they will avenge you." Jean-Baptiste de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck was born on August 1, 1744 in France, in a small town. He was the eleventh child in an impoverished aristocratic family. His parents wanted to make him a priest and assigned him to a Jesuit school, but after the death of his father, sixteen-year-old Lamarck left school and joined the army in 1761 as a volunteer. There he showed great courage and received the rank of officer. After the end of the war, Lamarck came to Paris, a neck injury forced him to leave military service. He began to study medicine. But he was more interested in the natural sciences, especially botany. Receiving a small pension, he entered one of the banking houses to earn money. After a number of years of intensive studies, the hardworking and talented young scientist wrote a large work in three volumes - "Flora of France", published in 1778. It describes many plants and provides guidance for identifying them. This book made Lamarck famous, and the following year he was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. At the Academy, he successfully continued to engage in botany and gained great authority in this science. In 1781 he was appointed chief botanist of the French king. Another passion of Lamarck was meteorology. From 1799 to 1810 he published eleven volumes devoted to this science. He studied physics and chemistry. In 1793, when Lamarck was already close to fifty, his scientific activity changed radically. The Royal Botanic Gardens, where Lamarck worked, was transformed into the Museum of Natural History. There were no free departments of botany in the museum, and he was offered to study zoology. It was difficult for an elderly man to leave his old job and move on to a new one, but Lamarck's great diligence and brilliant abilities overcame everything. About ten years later he became the same expert in the field of zoology as he was in botany. A lot of time passed, Lamarck grew old, crossed the line of sixty years. He now knew almost everything about animals and plants that was known to the science of that time. Lamarck decided to write a book that would not describe individual organisms, but would explain the laws of development of living nature. Lamarck wanted to show how animals and plants appeared, how they changed and developed, and how they reached their present state. Speaking in the language of science, he wanted to show that animals and plants were not created as they are, but developed by virtue of the natural laws of nature, that is, to show the evolution of the organic world. It was not an easy task. Only a few scientists before Lamarck had speculated about the variability of species, but only Lamarck, with his enormous store of knowledge, managed to solve this problem. Therefore, Lamarck is deservedly considered the creator of the first evolutionary theory. Ideas about the variability of the surrounding world (including living beings) were formed in antiquity. For example, the ancient Greek philosophers Heraclitus of Ephesus, Empedocles, Democritus, the ancient Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus thought about the changeability of the world. Later, a system of worldview appeared, based on religious dogmas about the immutability of the world created by the Creator - creationism. Then, in the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, new ideas about the variability of the world and the possibility of historical changes in the types of organisms were formed, which were called transformism. Among naturalists and transforming philosophers, the names of Robert Hooke, Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, Denis Diderot, Julien Offret de La Mettrie, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Erasmus Darwin, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire became known. All transformists recognized the variability of species of organisms under the influence of environmental changes. At the same time, most transformists did not yet have a holistic and consistent concept of evolution. Lamarck published his revolutionary book in 1809 and called it "Philosophy of Zoology", although it deals not only with animals, but with all living nature. It should not be thought that all those interested in science at that time were delighted with this book and understood that Lamarck had set a great task for scientists. It has often happened in the history of science that great ideas remained incomprehensible to contemporaries and were recognized only many years later. So it happened with the ideas of Lamarck. Some scientists did not pay any attention to his book, others laughed at it. Napoleon, to whom Lamarck took it into his head to present his book, scolded him so much that he could not refrain from tears. At the end of his life, Lamarck went blind and, forgotten by everyone, died on December 18, 1829, 85 years old. Only his daughter Cornelia remained with him. She took care of him until her death and wrote under his dictation. The words of Cornelia, imprinted on the monument to Lamarck, turned out to be prophetic; posterity really appreciated the works of Lamarck and recognized him as a great scientist. But this did not happen soon, many years after Lamarck's death, after Darwin's remarkable work On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859. Darwin confirmed the correctness of the evolutionary theory, proved it on many facts and made him remember his forgotten predecessor. The essence of Lamarck's theory is that animals and plants were not always the way we see them now. In times gone by, they were arranged differently and much more simply than they are now. Life on Earth arose naturally in the form of very simple organisms. Over time, they gradually changed, improved, until they reached the modern, familiar state. Thus, all living beings come from ancestors unlike them, more simply and primitively arranged. Why, then, did the organic world, or, in other words, all animals and plants, not stand still, like a watch without winding, but move forward, develop, change, as it is changing now? Lamarck answered this question as well. He gives two basic laws of evolution. "First law. In every animal that has not reached the limit of its development, the more frequent and longer use of any organ strengthens this organ little by little, develops and enlarges it and gives it a strength commensurate with the duration of use, while the constant non-use of that or any other organ gradually weakens it, leads to decline, continuously reduces its abilities and, finally, causes its disappearance. Second law. Everything that nature has forced individuals to gain or lose under the influence of the conditions in which their breed has long been located, and, consequently, under the influence of the predominance of the use or non-use of one or another part (of the body), - all this nature preserves through reproduction in new individuals. which are descended from the former, provided that the acquired changes are common to both sexes or to those individuals from which the new individuals are descended. Improving and refining his theory, Lamarck in his "Introduction" to the "Natural History of the Invertebrates" gave a new, somewhat expanded edition of his laws of evolution. "1. Life, by its own forces, tends to continuously increase the volume of all its bodies and expand their dimensions to the limits established by it. 2. The formation of a new organ in the body of an animal comes from a new need that has appeared and continues to be felt, and from a new movement that this need generates and maintains. 3. The development of organs and the strength of their action always depends on the use of these organs. 4. Everything that is acquired, noted, or changed in the organization of individuals during their life, is preserved by generation and transmitted to new species that are descended from those who experienced this change. Lamarck illustrated his theoretical construction with examples. "The bird, drawn to the water by the need to find the prey it needs to sustain life, spreads its toes when it wants to row and move on the surface of the water. Due to these constantly repeated movements of the fingers, the skin connecting the fingers at their base acquires the habit of stretching. Thus, with the passage of time, those wide webs between the toes were formed, which we now see in ducks, geese, etc. "... A coastal bird, which does not like to swim, but which is nevertheless forced to look for food near the shore, is constantly in danger of sinking into silt. And so, trying to avoid the need to dip the body in water, the bird makes every effort to stretch and lengthen its legs. As a result of a long habit, acquired by this bird and other individuals of its breed, to constantly stretch and lengthen the legs, all individuals of this breed, as it were, stand on stilts, since little by little they formed long bare legs ... " As Nikolai Iordansky notes: “Lamarck was the first to single out two of the most general directions of evolution: ascending development from the simplest forms of life to more and more complex and perfect ones and the formation of adaptations in organisms depending on changes in the external environment (development “vertically” and “horizontally”) Oddly enough, when discussing Lamarck's views, modern biologists more often recall only the second part of his theory (the development of adaptations in organisms), which was very close to the views of the transformists - Lamarck's predecessors and contemporaries, and leave its first part in the shade. , or progressive, evolution - the most original part of Lamarck's theory. The scientist believed that the historical development of organisms is not random, but natural and occurs in the direction of gradual and steady improvement, an increase in the overall level of organization, which Lamarck called gradation. Lamarck considered the driving force behind gradations "nature's striving for progress", inherent in all organisms and embedded in them by the Creator... ... Lamarck believed that the changes that plants and animals acquire during life are hereditarily fixed and transmitted to descendants; scientists call them modifications. Contemporaries considered Lamarck's arguments contradictory and shaky and did not accept his theory. However, some of Lamarck's ideas still attract the attention of the cured and in the XNUMXth century gave rise to several neo-Lamarckian concepts. Author: Samin D.K.
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