Lamarck’s Program: A Materialist View of Life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48160/18532330me8.183Keywords:
Lamarck, philosophical materialism, methodological materialism, deismAbstract
In this paper, we argue that Lamarck’s theories of transformism are based on a materialistic approach, in both the philosophical and methodological senses. The former is to be understood as scientific practice, a nineteenth-century tendency, heir to Cartesian mechanism, and the latter as part of a current in French philosophical materialism that asserted the primacy of matter over consciousness. The first type of materialism may be clearly observed in Lamarck’s own scientific practice, secured to the idea of nature as the cause of natural phenomena and scientific methodology as an instrument for knowing of these causes. Regarding the second type of materialism, occasional instances may be found in some of his works relating to the idea of the ‘eternity of matter’ and the ‘immortality of the soul’, as well as the idea of the ‘infinite variation of organic forms’ and the natural and historical origin of the physical and the moral in the human being.
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