The History of Science Society

Vol. 39, No.3, July 2010
Printer friendly version of Newsletter

Joseph H. Hazen Lecture: “Lamarck at the Zoo”

Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., 28 April 2010

With a nod to Picasso, Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, introduced the third biennial History of Science Society Joseph H. Hazen Lecture in New York City on April 28, 2010, with his original reinterpretation of Picasso’s 1955 painting, A Faun with Stars. Burkhardt’s composition of the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, gazing at a giraffe, with starfish overhead, was inspired by Picasso’s grizzled starry eyed faun (a symbolic romantic rendering of the 74 year-old artist), looking longingly at a nubile nymph (representing 28 year-old Jacqueline Rouge, whom he later married) playing the pipe while stars twinkled around their heads. Picasso’s work was given as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Joseph Hazen in 1970 and is featured in the Museum’s recent exhibit of its Picasso’s collection.

The HSS Hazen Lecture was endowed in Joseph Hazen’s honor by his daughter, Cynthia Hazen Polsky, a Met trustee, and is co-sponsored by the History of Science Society with the Section for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the New York Academy of Sciences, the City University of New York Liberal Studies, Bioethics, Science and Society Lecture Series, the Metropolitan New York Section of the History of Science Society, Columbia University Colloquium for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society and the University Seminar in History and Philosophy of Science, and New York University, The Gallatin School History of Science Lecture Series. The Lecture was hosted in the Skylight Room of the City University of New York Graduate Center, located in the former B. Altman Department Store landmark building on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.

In his paper, “Lamarck at the Zoo,” Burkhardt discussed the early years of the Paris Museum of Natural History, founded in 1793, and the significance of the many momentous scientific contributions made by the distinguished faculty of the Muséum and the coincidental, yet quixotic, founding under its aegis of the first new zoo of the modern era. He also explored the topic of the French as “collectors” of art and animals in the late 18th century, describing the Muséum’s participation in a special “festival of liberty” that celebrated the “triumphal entry” into Paris of art treasures confiscated in Italy, along with the arrival of various exotic animals that had been confiscated in other countries or collected in North Africa.

As professor of invertebrate zoology Lamarck first announced his broad theory of organic evolution to his students at the Muséum in 1800. The following year, he took on the task of overseeing the new menagerie.

His service in this capacity, which lasted only thirteen months, showed Lamarck to be a good citizen of the Muséum, but it had no apparent influence on his evolutionary theorizing. Ironically, the man who is known for a theory that emphasized the transformative effects of animal habits focused in his practice on specimens that were dead.

With this as a starting point, Burkhardt proceeded to discuss how the question of what might be learned from animals in a menagerie illuminates the relations between theory and practice in French zoology in this period. He contrasted Lamarck’s efforts with those of Frédéric Cuvier, the younger brother of Georges Cuvier, the Muséum’s famous comparative anatomist. Installed in the new post of menagerie superintendent in 1803, Frédéric Cuvier sought over the next three and a half decades to establish a new science of animal behavior. As another irony, Frédéric Cuvier proved to be a great champion of the idea of the inheritance of acquired characters (the idea usually remembered as the key feature of Lamarck’s evolutionary theory), but he neither credited Lamarck with this idea nor believed that the inheritance of acquired characters could go so far as to produce genuine species change.

Through the consideration of the provenance of the Muséum’s specimens, the contingent events that shaped the individual careers of Lamarck and Frédéric Cuvier, and the relations between theory and practice, Burkhardt illuminated a variety of key themes that characterized the golden age of French zoology.

History of Science Society

Joseph H. Hazen Lecture: “Lamarck at the Zoo”

Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., 28 April 2010

Quick Links....

Primary Navigation

Search

History of Science Society

Frequently Used Sites