Robert Edmond Grant
Encyclopedia
Robert Edmond Grant MD
FRCPEd
FRS (1793–1874) was born in Edinburgh
and educated at Edinburgh University as a physician
. He became one of the foremost biologists of the early 19th century at Edinburgh and subsequently the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy
at University College London
. He is noted for his influence on the young Charles Darwin
, and his espousal of Geoffroy
's ideas on evolution
.
Grant held the UCL
chair of comparative anatomy for life (1827–1874); he was elected FRS in 1836; he became Fullerian Professor of Physiology
at the Royal Institution
1837-8, and in 1847 Dean of the UCL Medical Faculty. In 1853 he became Swiney lecturer in geology to the British Museum
.
and invertebrate
zoology
, living on a legacy from his father. As a materialist freethinker
, and politically radical
, he was open to ideas in biology that were considered subversive in the climate of opinion prevailing in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars
. He cited Erasmus Darwin
's Zoönomia
in his doctoral dissertation, a work which introduced the idea of evolution in poetical form. Grant travelled widely, visiting universities in France
, Germany
, Italy
and Switzerland
and came into contact with the French zoologist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
who promulgated a view on evolution similar to that of Lamarck's
.
Grant studied marine life around the Firth of Forth
, collecting specimens around the shores near a house he took at Prestonpans
as well as from fishing boats, and becoming an expert on the biology of sponges and sea-slugs. He considered that the same laws of life affected all organisms, from monad to man (in this context monad
means a hypothetical primitive living organism or unit of organic life). Following Geoffroy, Grant arranged life into a chain, or an escalator, which was kept moving upwards by the appearance of spontaneously emerging monads at its base.
Grant was a stalwart of the Plinian Society
for student naturalists which Charles Darwin
joined in the autumn of 1826 while starting his second year of medical studies at Edinburgh University. Darwin became Grant's keenest student and assisted him with collecting specimens as well as learning from Grant's knowledge and theories.
During that winter and spring Grant published twenty papers in Edinburgh journals, mostly on sponges, eggs and larvae, which won him an international reputation, with the papers getting translated into French. Grant took Darwin as a guest to the Wernerian society which was held in Professor Robert Jameson
's room with membership restricted to MDs, where Darwin saw a demonstration by John James Audubon
.
On March 24 1827 Grant announced to the society that Darwin had established that black spores often found in oyster
shells were the eggs of a skate leech
, and published a paper on this discovery, while Darwin himself made a presentation on March 27 announcing this and his observations on sea-slug
larvae to the Plinian society. Darwin contributed to Grant's investigations into the 'unity of plan' of animals which culminated with Grant's announcement to the Wernerian society that he had identified the pancreas
in molluscs, demonstrated with a pinned-out sea-slug. This showed a homology between these simple creatures and mammals, tying them into his controversial chain of life.
. They met again in 1831 when Darwin visited him to get advice on storing specimens immediately before setting out on the Voyage of the Beagle
.
Grant was always involved in radical and democratic causes, campaigning for a new Zoological Society museum run professionally rather than by aristocratic grandees and tried to turn the British Museum
into a research institution run along French lines. He was opposed by Tories
who attacked him for supporting "the reptile press" and its "blasphemous derision of the truths of Christianity" and succeeded in getting him voted out of a post at the Zoological Society of London
.
When Darwin returned from his voyage with a large collection of specimens looking for assistance with their cataloguing and classification, Grant was one of the few to offer to examine the specimens but was turned down. It appears that Darwin did not want his work associated with controversy, though this resulted in the corals not being monographed, and they do not seem to have had further contact. The ambitious Tory Richard Owen
was vehemently opposed to Grant's evolution theory and succeeded in supplanting him at the Zoological Society as he moved to topple the "great Grant" as the city's leading comparative anatomist. Grant died still occupying the chair at UCL, a forgotten anachronism.
The second half of Grant's long professional life was not successful, possibly because Victorian England was no place for a radical, atheistic, homosexual (reputedly) Lamarckist on a low salary! (descriptions, probably justified, from Desmond's Huxley vol 2). Added to that, his style of teaching zoology was swept aside by Huxley's ebullient disciple E. Ray Lankester, who succeeded Grant into the new Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, organised by Huxley and carrying a greatly enhanced stipend. Lankester did, however, retain, reorganise and expand the college zoology museum, now known as the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL.
in his account of biology. He was a supporter of Thomas Wakley
, The Lancet
and the BMA
, all of whom were anti-establishment in their day. When he came to London he was not eligible to become a Fellow of the RCP because he was not a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Entry to these ancient universities was restricted to those of the Anglican faith; others who wished to practice in England had to take a licence from the RCP or acquire an apothecary's qualification. Grant refused to take out a London licence from the RCP, and so cut himself off from a lucrative source of income. He campaigned all his life for reform to both the RCP and the RCS. The main idea of the radicals was that government should take over or at least oversee the licensing powers of the medical corporations.
Wakley responded to Grant's support for the Lancet and its radical programme with fulsome praise of Grant, and printed the text of all 60 lectures of Grant's comparative anatomy course in the Lancet for 1833-4. Reviewers agreed that Grant's course was the first 'comprehensive and accessible' expostion of philosophical anatomy in English.
, a leading French comparative anatomist. Geoffroy was a deist, which is to say that he believed in a God, but also in a law-like universe, with no supernatural interference in the details of existence. This kind of opinion was common in the Enlightenment
, and goes with a rejection of revelation
and miracles, and does not interpret the Bible
as the literal word of God. Geoffroy's theory was not a theory of common descent, but a working-out of existing potential in a given type. For him, the environment causes a direct induction of organic change. This opinion Ernst Mayr
labels as 'Geoffroyism'. It is definitely not what Lamark believed (for Lamark, a change in habits is what changes the animal). The direct effect of environment is not believed today by any main-stream evolutionist; even Lawrence knew in 1816 that the climate does not directly cause the differences between human races.
Geoffroy's comparative anatomy featured the comparison of the same organ or group of bones through a range of animals. He argued (1818-22) for the 'unity of composition' of all vertebrates. One of his truly great discoveries was the homology of the opercular plates of the gill cover
of fishes with the inner ear ossicles of mammals. Geoffroy's methods worked well for vertebrates, but when he compared vertebrates to invertebrates by turning invertebrates upside down and partly inside out – "every animal is either inside or outside its vertebral column" – he met his nemesis
. In public debate in Paris before the Academie des Sciences (February 15, 1830) Georges Cuvier
demolished his claim that the four Cuvierian branches of the animal kingdom could be reduced to one. The relation between the ideas of Geoffroy and Cuvier can be expressed thus: whereas with Cuvier structure determines function, with Geoffroy function determines structure. The issue between them, however, was religious, political and social as well as scientific.
The Edinburgh extramural medical schools were fertile ground for Geoffroy's ideas, and Scottish radicals became Geoffroyan disciples. These included William A.F. Browne, a phrenologist who later turned his energies to asylum reform and neurological psychiatry - Browne's son James Crichton-Browne
played a major part in the shaping and composition of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
. Grant took these ideas to London, where he introduced homology
(the basic Geoffroyan technique) to his UCL students. He also advanced Lamark
and de Blainville
, whose ideas were of similar vein, and included ideas of recapitulation theory
.
Grant first went public on the subject of evolution in 1826. Here he speculated that 'transformation' might affect all organisms. He noted that successive strata seemed to show a progressive, natural succession of fossil animals. These forms "have evolved from a primitive model" by "external circumstances": this is a clear Lamarkian statement. Also, Grant accepted a common origin for plants and animals, and the basic units of life ('monads'), he proposed, were spontaneously generated. This is both reductionism
and materialism
, and obviously atheistic
in consequence. This kind of program went further than either Geoffroy or Lamark, though it is not a complete theory of evolution.
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
FRCPEd
Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh was established in the 17th century. While the RCPE is based in Edinburgh, it is by no means just a Scottish professional body - more than half of its 7,700 Fellows, Members, Associates and Affiliates live and practice medicine outside Scotland, in 86...
FRS (1793–1874) was born in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
and educated at Edinburgh University as a physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
. He became one of the foremost biologists of the early 19th century at Edinburgh and subsequently the first Professor of Comparative Anatomy
Comparative anatomy
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny .-Description:...
at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
. He is noted for his influence on the young Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, and his espousal of Geoffroy
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
's ideas on evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
.
Grant held the UCL
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
chair of comparative anatomy for life (1827–1874); he was elected FRS in 1836; he became Fullerian Professor of Physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
at the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
1837-8, and in 1847 Dean of the UCL Medical Faculty. In 1853 he became Swiney lecturer in geology to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
Edinburgh
Having obtained his MD at Edinburgh in 1814, he gave up medical practice in favour of marine biologyMarine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
and invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, living on a legacy from his father. As a materialist freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
, and politically radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
, he was open to ideas in biology that were considered subversive in the climate of opinion prevailing in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. He cited Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
's Zoönomia
Zoönomia
Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life is a two-volume medical work by Erasmus Darwin dealing with pathology, anatomy, psychology, and the functioning of the body...
in his doctoral dissertation, a work which introduced the idea of evolution in poetical form. Grant travelled widely, visiting universities in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and came into contact with the French zoologist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
who promulgated a view on evolution similar to that of Lamarck's
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
.
Grant studied marine life around the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
, collecting specimens around the shores near a house he took at Prestonpans
Prestonpans
Prestonpans is a small town to the east of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the unitary council area of East Lothian. It has a population of 7,153 . It is the site of the 1745 Battle of Prestonpans, and has a history dating back to the 11th century...
as well as from fishing boats, and becoming an expert on the biology of sponges and sea-slugs. He considered that the same laws of life affected all organisms, from monad to man (in this context monad
Monad
-Philosophy:*Monad a term meaning "unit" used variously by ancient philosophers from the Pythagoreans to Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to signify a variety of entities from a genus to God....
means a hypothetical primitive living organism or unit of organic life). Following Geoffroy, Grant arranged life into a chain, or an escalator, which was kept moving upwards by the appearance of spontaneously emerging monads at its base.
Grant was a stalwart of the Plinian Society
Plinian Society
The Plinian Society was a club at the University of Edinburgh for students interested in natural history. It was founded in 1823. Several of its members went on to have prominent careers, most notably Charles Darwin who announced his first scientific discoveries at the society.-Foundation,...
for student naturalists which Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
joined in the autumn of 1826 while starting his second year of medical studies at Edinburgh University. Darwin became Grant's keenest student and assisted him with collecting specimens as well as learning from Grant's knowledge and theories.
During that winter and spring Grant published twenty papers in Edinburgh journals, mostly on sponges, eggs and larvae, which won him an international reputation, with the papers getting translated into French. Grant took Darwin as a guest to the Wernerian society which was held in Professor Robert Jameson
Robert Jameson
thumb|Robert JamesonProfessor Robert Jameson, FRS FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist.As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and for his tuition of Charles...
's room with membership restricted to MDs, where Darwin saw a demonstration by John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
.
On March 24 1827 Grant announced to the society that Darwin had established that black spores often found in oyster
Oyster
The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....
shells were the eggs of a skate leech
Leech
Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...
, and published a paper on this discovery, while Darwin himself made a presentation on March 27 announcing this and his observations on sea-slug
Sea slug
Sea slug is a common name used for several different groups of saltwater snails that either lack a shell or have only an internal shell, in other words this name is used for various lineages of marine gastropod mollusks that are either not conchiferous or appear not to be.The phrase "sea slug" is...
larvae to the Plinian society. Darwin contributed to Grant's investigations into the 'unity of plan' of animals which culminated with Grant's announcement to the Wernerian society that he had identified the pancreas
Pancreas
The pancreas is a gland organ in the digestive and endocrine system of vertebrates. It is both an endocrine gland producing several important hormones, including insulin, glucagon, and somatostatin, as well as a digestive organ, secreting pancreatic juice containing digestive enzymes that assist...
in molluscs, demonstrated with a pinned-out sea-slug. This showed a homology between these simple creatures and mammals, tying them into his controversial chain of life.
University College London
Grant then became Professor of Comparative Anatomy at University College London, a post he held from 1827 until his death in 1874. Grant's pay was a mere £39 per annum. Darwin did not complete his medical studies at Edinburgh and moved in 1827 to Christ's College, CambridgeChrist's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...
. They met again in 1831 when Darwin visited him to get advice on storing specimens immediately before setting out on the Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Voyage of the Beagle is a title commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect...
.
Grant was always involved in radical and democratic causes, campaigning for a new Zoological Society museum run professionally rather than by aristocratic grandees and tried to turn the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
into a research institution run along French lines. He was opposed by Tories
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
who attacked him for supporting "the reptile press" and its "blasphemous derision of the truths of Christianity" and succeeded in getting him voted out of a post at the Zoological Society of London
Zoological Society of London
The Zoological Society of London is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats...
.
When Darwin returned from his voyage with a large collection of specimens looking for assistance with their cataloguing and classification, Grant was one of the few to offer to examine the specimens but was turned down. It appears that Darwin did not want his work associated with controversy, though this resulted in the corals not being monographed, and they do not seem to have had further contact. The ambitious Tory Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
was vehemently opposed to Grant's evolution theory and succeeded in supplanting him at the Zoological Society as he moved to topple the "great Grant" as the city's leading comparative anatomist. Grant died still occupying the chair at UCL, a forgotten anachronism.
The second half of Grant's long professional life was not successful, possibly because Victorian England was no place for a radical, atheistic, homosexual (reputedly) Lamarckist on a low salary! (descriptions, probably justified, from Desmond's Huxley vol 2). Added to that, his style of teaching zoology was swept aside by Huxley's ebullient disciple E. Ray Lankester, who succeeded Grant into the new Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, organised by Huxley and carrying a greatly enhanced stipend. Lankester did, however, retain, reorganise and expand the college zoology museum, now known as the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL.
Radicalism and Wakley
Grant was a 'progressive' in both social and scientific terms. He was widely and probably correctly regarded as a materialist or atheist; certainly there was no place for the supernaturalSupernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
in his account of biology. He was a supporter of Thomas Wakley
Thomas Wakley
Thomas Wakley , was an English surgeon. He became a demagogue and social reformer who campaigned against incompetence, privilege and nepotism. He was the founding editor of The Lancet, and a radical Member of Parliament .- Life :Thomas Wakley was born in Membury, Devon to a prosperous farmer and...
, The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
and the BMA
British Medical Association
The British Medical Association is the professional association and registered trade union for doctors in the United Kingdom. The association does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The association’s headquarters are located in BMA House,...
, all of whom were anti-establishment in their day. When he came to London he was not eligible to become a Fellow of the RCP because he was not a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Entry to these ancient universities was restricted to those of the Anglican faith; others who wished to practice in England had to take a licence from the RCP or acquire an apothecary's qualification. Grant refused to take out a London licence from the RCP, and so cut himself off from a lucrative source of income. He campaigned all his life for reform to both the RCP and the RCS. The main idea of the radicals was that government should take over or at least oversee the licensing powers of the medical corporations.
Wakley responded to Grant's support for the Lancet and its radical programme with fulsome praise of Grant, and printed the text of all 60 lectures of Grant's comparative anatomy course in the Lancet for 1833-4. Reviewers agreed that Grant's course was the first 'comprehensive and accessible' expostion of philosophical anatomy in English.
Grant and Geoffroy
On his frequent trips to the continent Grant became close friends with GeoffroyÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...
, a leading French comparative anatomist. Geoffroy was a deist, which is to say that he believed in a God, but also in a law-like universe, with no supernatural interference in the details of existence. This kind of opinion was common in the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, and goes with a rejection of revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
and miracles, and does not interpret the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
as the literal word of God. Geoffroy's theory was not a theory of common descent, but a working-out of existing potential in a given type. For him, the environment causes a direct induction of organic change. This opinion Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
labels as 'Geoffroyism'. It is definitely not what Lamark believed (for Lamark, a change in habits is what changes the animal). The direct effect of environment is not believed today by any main-stream evolutionist; even Lawrence knew in 1816 that the climate does not directly cause the differences between human races.
Geoffroy's comparative anatomy featured the comparison of the same organ or group of bones through a range of animals. He argued (1818-22) for the 'unity of composition' of all vertebrates. One of his truly great discoveries was the homology of the opercular plates of the gill cover
Operculum (fish)
The operculum of a bony fish is the hard bony flap covering and protecting the gills. In most fish, the rear edge of the operculum roughly marks the division between the head and the body....
of fishes with the inner ear ossicles of mammals. Geoffroy's methods worked well for vertebrates, but when he compared vertebrates to invertebrates by turning invertebrates upside down and partly inside out – "every animal is either inside or outside its vertebral column" – he met his nemesis
Nemesis (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nemesis , also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris . The Greeks personified vengeful fate as a remorseless goddess: the goddess of revenge...
. In public debate in Paris before the Academie des Sciences (February 15, 1830) Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
demolished his claim that the four Cuvierian branches of the animal kingdom could be reduced to one. The relation between the ideas of Geoffroy and Cuvier can be expressed thus: whereas with Cuvier structure determines function, with Geoffroy function determines structure. The issue between them, however, was religious, political and social as well as scientific.
The Edinburgh extramural medical schools were fertile ground for Geoffroy's ideas, and Scottish radicals became Geoffroyan disciples. These included William A.F. Browne, a phrenologist who later turned his energies to asylum reform and neurological psychiatry - Browne's son James Crichton-Browne
James Crichton-Browne
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS was a leading British psychiatrist famous for studies on the relationship of mental illness to neurological damage and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health...
played a major part in the shaping and composition of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration...
. Grant took these ideas to London, where he introduced homology
Homology (biology)
Homology forms the basis of organization for comparative biology. In 1843, Richard Owen defined homology as "the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function". Organs as different as a bat's wing, a seal's flipper, a cat's paw and a human hand have a common underlying...
(the basic Geoffroyan technique) to his UCL students. He also advanced Lamark
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
and de Blainville
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville was a French zoologist and anatomist.Blainville was born at Arques, near Dieppe. In about 1796 he went to Paris to study painting, but he ultimately devoted himself to natural history, and attracted the attention of Georges Cuvier, for whom he occasionally...
, whose ideas were of similar vein, and included ideas of recapitulation theory
Recapitulation theory
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—and often expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a disproven hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages...
.
Grant first went public on the subject of evolution in 1826. Here he speculated that 'transformation' might affect all organisms. He noted that successive strata seemed to show a progressive, natural succession of fossil animals. These forms "have evolved from a primitive model" by "external circumstances": this is a clear Lamarkian statement. Also, Grant accepted a common origin for plants and animals, and the basic units of life ('monads'), he proposed, were spontaneously generated. This is both reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
and materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, and obviously atheistic
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
in consequence. This kind of program went further than either Geoffroy or Lamark, though it is not a complete theory of evolution.