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Lacépède and Cuvier: A comparative case study of goals and methods in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century fish classification

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References

  1. See William Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 66–67; Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 190–208; and Mary P. Winsor, Starfish, Jellyfish, and the Order of Life: Issues in Nineteenth-Century Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 2. Mayr's discussion is particularly illustrative of the points made here. Studies of botanical classification in the period under consideration include F. A. Stafleu, “Adanson and His Familles des plantes,” in Adanson: The Bicentennial of Michel Adanson's “Familles des plantes” (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology Monograph Series, no. 1, 1963–64), I, 123–264; idem, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans (Utrecht: International Association for Plant Taxonomy, 1971); and Henri Daudin, De Linné à Jussieu: Méthodes de la classification et l'idée de série en botanique et en zoologie (1740–1790) (Paris: F. Alcan, 1926).

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  2. Most studies of early nineteenth-century zoology have considered the issue of “natural” versus “artificial” classification only in a manner prefatory to more extended discussions of what form the “natural” order, once accepted as real and attainable through classification, was expected to assume. See, e.g., Winsor, Starfish; and R. W. Burkhardt, Jr., The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Henri Daudin's De Linné à Jussieu and Cuvier et Lamarck: Les classes zoologiques et l'idée de série animale (1790–1830) (Paris: F. Alcan, 1926), although valuable studies of botanical and zoological classification during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, do not consider the “artificial”-“natural” dichotomy with reference to the objectives and supportive methods of specific classifications. P. F. Stevens's “Haüy and A.-P. de Candolle: Crystallography, Botanical Systematics, and Comparative Morphology, 1780–1840,” J. Hist. Biol., 17 (1984), 49–82, and “Metaphors and Typology in the Development of Botanical Systematics 1690–1960, or the Art of Putting New Wine in Old Bottles,” Taxon, 33 (1984), 169–211, although excellent studies of the development of “natural” classification in botany and zoology, do not consider differences that developed between the methods and objectives of these classifications and those of their supposedly “artificial” counterparts.

  3. See Tobey A. Appel, “Lacépède,” Dict. Sci. Biog., 7: 546–548; A. C. L. G. Günther, An Introduction to the Study of Fishes (Edinburgh: Adams & Charles Black, 1880), pp. 19–21; A. C. Günther and A. S. Woodward, “History of Herpetology,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1910–1911), 23: 137–38.; and D. S. Jordan, “The History of Ichthyology,” Science, 16 (1902), 248.

  4. Appel, “Lacépède.”

  5. See Francis Willughby and John Ray, De historia piscium libri quatuor (Oxford: Sheldonian, 1686); Peter Artedi, Ichthyologia sive opera omnia de piscibus (Leiden: Conrad Wishoff, 1738).

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  6. Bernard Lacépède, Histoire naturelle des poissons (Paris: Plassan, 1798–1803), I, 143.

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  7. Carolus Linnaeus, Systema naturae, 10th ed. Stockholm: Salvii, 1758–59; Lacépède, Histoire des poissons, I, 144.

  8. Bernard Lacépède, Histoire naturelle des poissons (Paris: Plassan, 1798–1803), I, 144.

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  9. Bernard Lacépède, Histoire naturelle des poissons (Paris: Plassan, 1798–1803), pp. 145–146.

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  10. Bernard Lacépède, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des animaux à mammelles,” Mém. Nat. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), 469–502.

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  11. Bernard Lacépède, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des animaux à mammelles,” Mém Nat. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), pp. 469–470.

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  12. Bernard Lacépède, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des animaux à mammelles,” Mém Nat. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), p. 470.

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  13. Bernard Lacépéde, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des aninaux à mammelles,” Mém. Natl. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), 470–471.

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  14. Bernard Lacépéde, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des aninaux à mammelles,” Mém. Natl. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), p. 471.

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  15. Bernard Lacépéde, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique des aninaux à mammelles,” Mém. Natl. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), p. 473.

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  16. Bernard Lacépède, “Mémoire sur une nouvelle table méthodique de la classe des oiseaux,” Mém. Nat. Sci. Arts, Sci. Math. Phys., 3 (1801), 456.

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  17. Appel, “Lacépède,” p. 547.

  18. Parenthetically, Lacépède's “qualités principales” are not without modern analogs among the properties that systematists variously suggest are important in classification. The first “qualité principale” (“indicative”) was clearly designed to fulfill the same purpose as the taxonomic keys still much in use and an important element of systematic revisions. Lacépède's interest in correlations as determinant of character weight (the “qualité principale” of “naturelle”) resembles modern systematic methods, which also emphasize character correlations as indicative of “natural” groupings, however, “natural” is defined. The “qualité principale” of “analytique” is akin to suggestions that adaptive significance be a measure of character weight. And Lacépède's fourth “qualité principale,” an applicability to the discovery of new forms, is analogous to modern concepts of classification stability and predictivity.

  19. Georges Cuvier, “Mémoire sur la composition de la mâchoire supérieure des Poissons, et sur le parti que l'on peut en tirer pour la distribution méthodique de ces animaux,” Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat., 1 (1815), 102–132; idem, Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation (Paris: Déterville, 1817), pp. 110–113. A slightly altered version of Cuvier's classification appeared later in Georges Cuvier and Achille Valenciennes, Histoire naturelle des poissons (Paris: Levrault, 1828–1849), I, 572–573.

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  20. Georges Cuvier, “Mémoire sur la composition de la mâchoire supérieure des Poissons, et sur le parti que l'on peut en tirer pour la distribution méthodique de ces animaux,” Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat., 1 (1815), pp. 121–122, i25. Modern taxonomic equivalents cited here and elsewhere are sensu J. S. Nelson, Fishes of the World, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1984).

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  21. Cuvier, Règne animal, II, 112.

  22. Analyses of Cuvier's zoological theory and practice can be found in William Coleman, Georges Cuvier, Zoologist: A Study in the History of Evolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964); and E S. Russell, Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, reprint ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 31–44. The ensuing discussion is derived from these studies and the author's own researches.

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  23. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, vi–vii.

  24. Ibid., p. 10.

  25. Ibid., pp. xxiv–xxv.

  26. Linnaeus used the number of external gill slits; Artedi, the presence or absence of branchiostegal rays; and Lacépède, the presence or absence of the opercle and branchiostegal membrane. Noteworthy is the interest in the respiratory apparatus and the strict usage of external characters thereof.

  27. Georges Cuvier, “Mémoire sur la composition de la mâchoire supérieure des Poissons, et sur le parti que l'on peut en tirer pour la distribution méthodique de ces animaux,” Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat., 1 (1815), pp. 102–103, 122.

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  28. Georges Cuvier, “Mémoire sur la composition de la mâchoire supérieure des Poissons, et sur le parti que l'on peut en tirer pour la distribution méthodique de ces animaux,” Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat., 1 (1815), pp. 120–122.

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  29. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Histoire des poissons, I, 566.

  30. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 10–11.

  31. Ibid., pp. 11, 36, 55–56. The best example of Cuvier's use of “la nature de l'organe” to rank characters and hence taxa is his delineation of the four animal “embranchements”: see Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 55–61; and Coleman, Georges Cuvier, pp. 90–94.

  32. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 11.

  33. It was also at these taxonomic levels, perhaps not coincidentally, that the ideal of Cuvierian “naturalness” was compromised - see next section, below.

  34. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 11.

  35. Ibid., II, 110, 113.

  36. Ibid., p. 159. Cuvier also subdivided the reptiles (after Brongniart), mammals, and birds in part by conditions of the organs of feeding and respiration: see Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 76–81, 300–303; II, 5.

  37. Ibid., I, xxv.

  38. Ibid., II, 110.

  39. Ibid., I, 10–12.

  40. Ibid., p. 6. See also Russell, Form and Function, p. 33.

  41. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, v.

  42. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Histoire des poissons, I, 274.

  43. Cuvier, Règne animal, I, 67.

  44. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Histoire des poissons, I, 274.

  45. For bibliographic details of the Histoire naturelle des poissons, see Reeve M. Bailey, “The Authorship of Names Proposed in Cuvier and Valenciennes' Histoire naturelle des poissons,” Copeia 1951, 249–251; and Theodore N. Gill, “Arrangement of the Families of Fishes, or Classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Misc. Colls., 247 (1872), 41–43.

  46. Tobey A. Appel, “Valenciennes,” Dict. Sci. Biog., 13: 554–555.

  47. Only eight tableaux were published, six of which were by Cuvier; these appeared in the first six volumes of the Histoire des poissons. Following Cuvier's death additional tableaux were not included in later volumes.

  48. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Histoire des poissons, IV, 6.

  49. Cuvier, Règne animal, II, 241.

  50. Lacépède sometimes considered internal structures when determining the systematic positions of species - for example, the problematical hagfish (“Gastrobranche,” Myxine) and lampreys (“Pétromyzon”); Lacépède, Histoire des poissons, I, 524–530.

  51. Cuvier and Valenciennes, Histoire des poissons, I, 385–414; Lacépède, Histoire des poissons, I, 47–48.

  52. James E. Bicheno, “On Systems and Methods in Natural History”, Trans. Linn. Soc. London, 15 (1827), 481.

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  53. Support is thus given to the parenthetical statement by Paul L. Farber: “as ... with most dichotomous divisions, close analysis blurs the distinctions [between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ systems]” (The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760–1850 [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982], p. 80).

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  1. Alan H. Bornbusch

    Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, Smith College, 01063, Northampton, Ma.

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    Alan H. Bornbusch

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Bornbusch, A.H. Lacépède and Cuvier: A comparative case study of goals and methods in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century fish classification. J Hist Biol 22, 141–161 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209606

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