Transformism

Transformationism, as the study of the origin of organisms from each other through secular modification is a particular application to the organic world of the general idea of ​​evolution or the gradual development and complication of everything that exists, has undergone several periods in its history.

Classic Period

The doctrine of species mutability repeatedly emerged in the classical era, but its source was not a comparison of the currently existing forms, but rather an insufficiently strong and accurate definition of the very concept of a species. Sometimes, however, this doctrine was based on abstract philosophical considerations, but nevertheless it remained unclearly formulated and completely unfounded in fact. If we add to it the general primitiveness of ideas about the nature of that at that time, then it becomes clear why the transformist views of the classical world seem so naive, almost childish.

Medieval Period

He retained from the previous only that which was the most naive and fabulous, without a philosophical lining of transformist views. Even in the 17th century Dure, Bonnami, Kircher told all sorts of fiction about this. So, Dure told and even vividly depicted how the leaves of the same tree turn into fish, then birds, depending on whether they fell on land or in water. Traces of evolutionary doctrine were also seen among those fathers of the church who more philosophically looked at the world, like blessed Augustine, and the same traces of the idea of ​​the unity of the worlds of inorganic, plant, animal, and man, among Arabs, for example, at Avempas (Ibn-Badia), and equally clearly see the idea of ​​the continuity of form in Averroes. However, at the end of the XVI century. Bruno taught that divinity is not something separate from the world, but an internal cause of being; as the spirit permeates the body, so the deity rules the world from the inside to the outside. Everything lives in nature, and nothing is destroyed. Life is a metamorphosis of death, and death is a metamorphosis of life. Every creature is a monad , reproducing in a certain form a monad of monads - a deity.

Seasoning Period

In the speculative period, the doctrine was defended by thinkers on the basis of a priori conclusions of philosophy, and if naturalists, like Bonn , joined them, their ideas relied very little on facts, and in essence took their beginning from the same general philosophical direction of the era.

Morphological period

Beginning with Buffon, transformationism passes into a new period; during that time, the actual material has increased significantly. During this period, the teaching found its most brilliant representative in the person of Lamarck . The study of the zoology of the internal organization of animals leads to the establishment of four types of Cuvier , which stood in clear contradiction with the idea of ​​the unity of the plan, which was defended by transformationism in the person of E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire .

XIX century

In the first half of the XIX century, there were already several groups of transformism. Some defended the idea of ​​an archetype that was not devoid of a natural-philosophical lining. Others, like Bory de Saint-Vincent, defended the idea of ​​Lamarck. Still others, like L. von Buch, Chambers, Galdemann, defended the views of Buffon and S.-Hilaire.

Chambers, in an essay printed anonymously at first (“Vestiges of Creation”), argued that at the same time there are two impulses: one is a predetermined plan for gradual improvement; the other, depending on the vital forces and determining adaptation to the conditions. A change of species occurs as a result of sudden changes.

Embryology in the person of Meckel, Wolf, Baire and Serra was inclined to the idea of ​​transformationism. Baer thought that it would be too childish to view species as permanent and unchanging, and Sirr developed the idea of ​​Kilmeyer and S.-Hilaire regarding the similarity of embryonic stages with the ancestors of this species, although he builds wrong generalizations on this foundation.

The botanists Noden, Brown, Negeli and Hofmeister were also close to transforming views. From philosophers Herbert Spencer speaks out for the variability of organisms depending on conditions.

Breeding Theory

The breeders' group, which expressed, in the person of Wales, Patrick Matthew and Nohden , the idea of ​​selection, which formed the basis of the Darwin and Wallace hypothesis, deserved the most attention.

Darwinism

The appearance of the book of Darwin and at the same time the book of Wallace almost immediately changes the picture. Darwin highlighted natural selection, and Lamarck and Buffon's factors allotted only a secondary place. The Darwinists went even further and denied their meaning altogether. The hypothesis of natural selection was surrounded by such an overwhelming mass of facts, the explanation itself was so natural and plausible that the fate of the idea of ​​the constancy of species was solved forever and irrevocably. But Darwin took another step: on domestic animals and on primates, as in private examples, he showed the brilliant application of his ideas, which have since become guiding in the study of biology.

All embryology , all comparative anatomy , all paleontology, after the Darwinian period, followed the path they had outlined. During his life, Darwin saw how an evolutionary teaching, arising in the field of abstract thinking and coming from outside to biology as a poorly founded hypothesis, was strengthened by the facts of biology, penetrated into other branches of positive knowledge and seized philosophy.

• Biological species
• Emergence of life
• Evolution
• History of evolutionary teaching
• Darwin's Theory
• Hereditary variability

• Zeller, "Ueber die Griechischen Vorgänger Darwin's" ("Abhandl. D. Berlin. Akad.", 1878); W. Carus. Geschichte der Zoologie (Munich, 1872);
• E. Perrier, "La Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin" (there is a Russian translation, "Biblioth. Scient. Internat.", P., 1889);
• Osborn, "From the Greeks to Darwin" (New York, 1889);
• Hoefer, "Histoire de Zoologie" (P., 1890);
• A. de Quatrefages, "Darwin et ses précurseurs français, étude sur le transformisme" (2nd ed., P., 1892; "Biblioth. Scientif. Internat.");
• Romanes, "Darwin und nach Darwin" (Lpz., 1892 and 1895);
• “Borzenkov readings on comparative anatomy” (“Scientific Notes of the Imp. Moscow Univ.,” Issue IV, 1884);
• Shimkevich, "Biological Essays" (historical development of an evolutionary idea, St. Petersburg, 1898).

• Shimkevich, V.M. Transformism // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extra). - SPb. , 1890-1907.