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Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the First Embryological Evolutionary Model on the Origin of Vertebrates

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Abstract

Historiographical accounts typically place the formulation of the first embryological theory of the evolutionary origin of vertebrates after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). However, the French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire developed an embryological evolutionary model in the 1820s that followed the Lamarckian theory. Geoffroy was the first to establish a direct embryological relationship between vertebrates and invertebrates. This idea was not forgotten, and the embryologists Anton Dohrn and Carl Semper subsequently updated it in their annelid theory as part of a debate about the origin of vertebrates that occurred during the latter part of the nineteenth century. This paper reviews the traditional historiography, analyzing and integrating Geoffroy’s model into the current body of ideas.

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Notes

  1. Fischer (1972a, b) is part of the thematic volume on Geoffroy he edited for the journal Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, which also includes articles by Franck Bourdier, Théophile Cahn, François Dagognet, and Bernard Duhamel that discuss various aspects of Geoffroy’s work that will be discussed here.

  2. For Geoffroy’s nisus formativus concept see Laurent (1987, pp. 346–349).

  3. Particularly, see Fischer (1972a). Also Geoffroy (1825a).

  4. The book continued in use for seventy years after its publication, reaching its seventh edition in 1964.

  5. Geoffroy's first paper to include the principle of unity of organic composition was Mémoire sur les rapports naturels des Makis, Lemur, L. et description de une espèce nouvelle de mamifère (1796). In 1807, he wrote his first formal essay on the topic, “Considérations sur les pièces de la tête osseuse des animaux vertébrés, et particulièrement sur celles du crâne des oiseaux,” and consolidated his theory in Philosophie anatomique (Anatomical Philosophy); see Geoffroy (1828b, p. 20).

  6. It led to the famous scientific debate between Geoffroy and Cuvier at the Académie Royal des Sciences (Royal Academy of Sciences) in March 1830; see Appel (1987). Geoffroy’s perspective of the discussion is recorded in his book Principes de philosophie zoologique (Principles of Zoological Philosophy) (1830).

  7. The theory of the vertebrate archetype was a fundamental argument of what is known as the morphological period of biology, 1800–1860. The theory, based on the idea of an archetype as responsible for the organization of living beings, was first suggested by Kant and later by Goethe. The theory was formulated more precisely by Lorenz Oken (1807) and Carl Carus (1818, 1828): the organization of vertebrate animals can be reduced to one uniform type. Geoffroy applied the idea to the natural ensemble by developing his principle of unity of composition—unity also covers plants and minerals (1831, p. 381). The topic was the centerpiece of Richard Owen’s homological research program (1848); see Russell (1916), Rupke (1993), Richards (2002, 2016).

  8. In the framework of philosophical anatomy, the term homology meant the similarities between the different parts of an animal; and analogy the similarities between the different animal parts (Isidore Geoffroy 1832, p. 59). In the mid-nineteenth century, Geoffroy played a relevant role in the debate over the meaning of these terms; see Owen (1847). Richard Owen later provided a more precise definition: “An ‘analogue’ is a part or organ in one animal which has the same function as a part or organ in another animal. A ‘homologue’ is the same part or organ in different animals under every variety of form and function” (Owen 1866, p. xii). Edwin Lankester subsequently articulated an evolutionary connotation of homology (1870).

  9. Geoffroy divided the animal kingdom into four groups: hauts-vertébrés (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals), dermo-vertébrés, molluscs and radiates. This deviated from Cuvier’s classification, which differentiated between vertebrates, articulates, molluscs, and radiates. The dermo-vertébrés included the classes established by Cuvier as articulate: annelids, crustaceans, arachnids, and insects (Cuvier 1812, p. 84).

  10. Geoffroy applied the vertebral theory of the skull defined by Lorenz Oken, who postulated the formation of the cranium via vertebral metamorphosis (Oken 1807). See Owen (1847) for a contemporary analysis of the issue; for a historical account, see Richards (2002).

  11. The course on the subject of the vertebra that Geoffroy taught at the Faculty of Science in 1820 was attended by German and British specialists (Geoffroy 1822a, p. 99).

  12. A group of invertebrates almost equivalent to articulates (Articulata) comprised of five classes: Crustacea, Myriapoda, Arachnides, Insecta, and Vermes (Leach 1824, p. 401).

  13. In Geoffroy’s article “Considérations sur les pièces de la tête osseuse des animaux vertébrés” (“Considerations about Bones in the Head of Vertebrates”), which was part of his theory on the unit of composition, he presented the idea that lower vertebrates (fishes) were comparable to the foetuses of higher vertebrates (1807, p. 344). Serres affirmed that this was the first time this argument had been presented (Serres 1824a, p. 188; see also I. Geoffroy 1841, p. 96). Explicitly developed by Haeckel, the law of embryological parallelism became the theory of recapitulation or the biogenetic law. To differentiate between the two approaches, E.S. Russell named the law of parallelism the Meckel-Serres law (1916, p. 94). In his article “Das Biogenetische Grundgesetz” (“The Basic Biogenetic Law”), J. Kohlbrugge provided a list of 72 naturalists who dealt with concepts close to the Haeckelian theory of recapitulation between 1797 and 1886 (1911, p. 448). This list does not, however, include Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, who touched on the subject in (1793). For Geoffroy’s concept of recapitulation, see Fischer (1993).

  14. Geoffroy drew on Serres’s experimental studies on ostéogénie for the empirical foundations of his theory (1819, p. 344 n.1).

  15. Geoffroy was, of course, not the only one to privilege the skeletal system. He indicated that, albeit to a different extent, the subject had interested Jean Burdin, Johann Baptist Spix, Carl Friedrick Kielmeyer, Johann Peter Frank, Johann Friedrich Meckel, and Lorenz Oken (Geoffroy 1819, p. 346). Others, too, dealt with this topic, including Johann Göethe, Carl Gustav Carus, and Henri Ducrotay de Blainville, and the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate skeleton was later Richard Owen’s fundamental line of research.

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Galera, A. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the First Embryological Evolutionary Model on the Origin of Vertebrates. J Hist Biol 54, 229–245 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09638-5

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