The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change
The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change
Georges-Louis Leclerc proposed species change and extinction back in the 1740s, a new book reveals
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Only a hundred years ahead and didn't nail survival of the fittest? Pshh, amateur.
Here's Lucretius in 50 BCE:
In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn't do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.
For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.
Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now."
- De Rerum Natura book 5 lines 837-859
Bonus round, nearly nailed Mendelian trait inheritance too:
Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.
- De Rerum Natura book 4 lines 1217-1232
He was close with the "seeds" parents pass onto their children (not knowing what genes or DNA were, or course), but he should have been able to empirically figure out that this was incorrect:
And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see
Because sometimes children can look like their grandparent more than a parent, meaning the "seeds" are there, just latent.
You mean like the first few lines of what I quoted where he talks about how traits from grandparents or great grandparents can come back?
Oh yeah, totally forgot that. In that case, it's even more puzzling that he would claim the child inherited more "seed" from one parent than the other based on their apperance.
I think his idea includes things like "if the kid looks like the maternal grandfather, more contribution was from the mother's seed than the father's."
Not that it's exclusively that the contributions are only dependent on how closely matching the appearance of the mother or father and only the mother or father.
But sometimes a kid can look more like their mother, and that kid's kid can look more like their paternal grandfather. How would he explain that?
That the kid's kid got more of the dad's seed in the "shifting lottery."
It's not like he's saying a kid that looks like the mother isn't getting any contribution from the father.
And while he's technically wrong in the idea that there's a disproportionate overall contribution from each parent, it is true that genes and traits responsible for physical appearance can be disproportionately passed on.