Abstract
I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as ‘scientific’ early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim’s very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument.
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Notes
Csiszar (2018) traces later nineteenth-century scientists and scholars attributing growing significance to scientific papers in scientific periodicals and in specialized serials, resulting in greater instability in the boundary distinction between the specialist and generalist periodicals and their readerships.
Comte regarded biology as an abstract field divided into the static/structural and the dynamic/functional aspects, and did not deal with biological phenomena then considered central, such as development and reproduction, since his framework was fixist. Beside ‘organism’ and ‘organization’ he emphasized the significance of the totality of the (for him a-biotic) milieu and the needed harmony between milieu and the living entity, stressing thus the duality of ‘the material’ and ‘the living’, rejecting cell theory.
The impact of his work was inestimable, not only in creating a framework for experimental medicine, but in arguing for an experimental methodological approach in the life sciences, yet holding on to explanation in causal terms that could not be reduced to mere enumeration of empirical effects, combined with an emphasis on the organism and the contingent-biological.
Ribot’s journal Revue Philosophique played an important role in enabling both a non-partisan philosophical venue and a ‘cultural positivist sieve’ orientation on the emerging fields of psychology and sociology.
See Beck (2014), Bowler (1984, 1988), Conry (1974), De Bont (2010, 2015), Delage (1909), Gould (1977), La Vergata (1996), Limoges (1994, 2014), Loison (2009, 2010, 2011a, b), Persell (1999), Roger ed. (1979). See also Morange (2010). For detailed biographies of French neo-Lamarckism: Becquemont (2010), Blanckaert (1979, 2004), De Bont (2011), D’Hombres (2010), Feuerhahn (2011), Fischer (1979), Gohau (1979), Thomas (2003) , Viré (1979) and Wellman (1979).
Milne Edwards maintained that the degree of differentiation and specialization among the elements of an organism expressed the degree of its cohering enhancement. More complex organisms had more successfully adapted themselves to their external milieu and achieved a better equilibrium in their internal milieu. He termed this ‘the economy of the organism’, particularly in his ‘Considérations sur Quelques Principes Relatifs a la Classification Naturelle des Animaux’ 1844, where his discussion of the physiological division of labor appeared. The multi volumed ‘Leçons sur la Physiologie et l'Anatomie Comparée de l'Homme et des Animaux’ had immense influence on the new generation of FNL biologists.
His principal works were translated between 1874-1.
Much work was invested in FNL on the stages of the embryo’s development seen through the biogenic law, in particular the question of ‘condensation’ (Gould’s 1977 term), or ‘acceleration’ in Perrier’s work. On Haeckel in these respects see Richards 2008, especially chapters 5 and 7.
D’Hombres and Mehdaoui (2012), while discussing Espinas, posit the new cell theory also as catering for a view of plurality of degrees of individuality of living entities.
Revue Philosophique (1887, p.120).
Riskin (2016, pp. 231–232). Riskin argues that Darwin held on to the ‘to vary’ part while French neo-Lamarckism held to the ‘to complexify and to progress’ parts.
Bowler (1992) stresses that Darwin was read through Lamarckian assumptions.
Giard’s special position at the Sorbonne from 1888 and Perrier’s at the Museum d’histoire naturelle are cases in point.
Numerous Durkheim interpreters have debated whether he actually read any of Marx’ works, in particular Das Kapital, firsthand, in French (Das Kapital a-b-were translated in 1867, 1872-5) or during his stay in Germany. Some suggest he struggled to offer an alternative explanation of contemporary society, as in The Division of Labor in Society, particularly the last part, ‘The Abnormal Forms,’ and indirectly in articles and reviews (e.g., on Labriola 1897), attempting also to distinguish between varieties of socialism and his ‘scientific sociology.’.
The ‘Spencerian impact,’ played a significant role in introducing evolution and evolutionizing to the cultural field—to emerging human sciences fields in France especially ‘scientific’ psychology and sociology, and markedly to the political discourse, in which ‘evolution’ and ‘progress’ were collapsed in support of reforms. Most of Spencer’s major works of these years were translated and published by major publishing houses, as well as some of his more important articles. Yet Spencer’s disappearance from the French cultural field was almost as quick as his rise, and by late 1890s he had become almost irrelevant. See e.g., Beck (2014), Becquemont and Mucchielli (1998), Borlandi (1993), Brooks (1998), Gissis (2018), D’Hombres and Mehdaoui (2012), Feuerhahn (2011), Heilbron (2015), Logue (1983) and Mucchielli (1998).
In the early 1870s he translated with Ribot (who remained a life-long close friend) Spencer’s second edition of The Principles of Psychology.
In writing the subsections on Espinas and Perrier, I have used, beside Espinas, Perrier and other contemporaries’ writings, also: Barberis (2003), Beck (2014), Becquemont (2010), Brooks (1998), Conry (1993), D’Hombres (2010), D’Hombres and Mehdaoui (2012), Feuerhahn (2011), Gould (1977), Heilbron (2015), Logue (1983), Loison (2010, 2011a, b), Tirard (2013), La Vergata (1996) and Thomas (2003).
1878, pp. 157–158.
Espinas was nominated to a chair at the University of Bordeaux (where he would become dean of humanities). In 1884 he wrote a scathing article on the philosophy final examinations (l’agrégation) at the universities, whose arguments resonated in Durkheim’s (1895) (RP 39, pp. 121–147, in Karady Textes 3 pp. 403-434.) In 1893, Espinas was nominated to a chair for the history of social economy at the Sorbonne.
Especially in Espinas (1878, chap. 2, pp. 61–119).
This further step was unique to Espinas and then to Perrier.
Espinas, Perrier (and Spencer) elaborated on concepts of association, coordination, mutuality and solidarity, to solve difficulties in accounting for facets of collectivity in individually oriented systems, especially ‘developed or superior societies’.
Espinas was very close to arguing that society, in a particular signification, was an organism (e.g. wider discussion of ‘organism’ in late 1890s, and the René Worms group).
An 1882 article on the state of the social sciences argued that philosophy of evolution which provided a reliable method when applied to the natural sciences, was a promising one also for social science. Espinas (1882, p. 528).
His relations with Durkheim—whom he looked upon as a follower for a while, given Durkheim’s use of notions of collectivity, collective consciousness, solidarity—had their ups and downs. In the early 1900s the chasm became public in a sequence of exchanges in which Célestin Bouglé, Espinas and Durkheim took part.
In a series of four installments in the Scientific American of 1879, titled “The beginnings and the development of life”.
The Museum lecture, 1893: “Lamarck et le transformisme actuel”.
See especially p. 37. His use of the notion of protoplasm conveyed his Bernardian physiological determinism.
Following Haeckel’s biogenetic law, he had to cater for the adult form with its acquired modifications being passed on in its descendants’ ontogeny, appearing as their embryonic features.
He later became the president of the French (mostly FNL) Eugenics society.
Alphonse Milne Edwards (1882), « Elements de l’histoire naturelle des animaux- anatomie et physiologie animales: programme du cours d’anatomie et de physiologie animales pour la classe de philosophie» (arre`té ministeriel de 2 août 1880). Paris, Masson, a compulsory reading for agrégation philosophy students. Durkheim was undoubtedly familiar with this textbook, for many of the examples used in his writings during the 1890s seem to had been drawn from it. Perrier wrote the life sciences units for elementary school (1880, 1881, 1888) and for the baccalaureate in philosophy (1880).
e.g., Perrier on Zoology—animal colonial life (1881), Giard on the history of transformism, and as befits a new surge of colonial acquisitions, Alphonse Milne Edwards a course for travelers. There were also more professionally specialized periodicals, by the positivist author and editor Littré on ‘the hypothesis of transformism’, e.g., Philosophie Positive 1896, p. 22, with Lamarck as the pioneer and Darwin as a later addition.
Since its emphasis was on the cognitive-psychological-social, with however, sharp critique of ‘Weismannism’ in the 1890s.
“un lien nouveau entre la sociologie et les branches de la biologie, qui s ‘occupent de la constitution et du fonctionnement des organismes”. (Perrier 1880/1881, pp. 203–204, my translation).
Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique was republished only in 1873, Paris, Savy, with an introduction by a Montpellier natural history professor, Charles Martins. Further writing on Lamarck appeared at the end of the 1870s until around the mid-1880s, then rose again around 1900, with a different emphasis, accompanied by republication of further writings by Lamarck.
Rizat Revue Internationale des Sciences Biologiques (1883, p. 11).
Giard’s opening lecture was also reprinted in the Bulletin Scientifique de la France et de la Belgique (the journal he edited) in (1889).
In this essay, Giard fashioned the image of Lamarck as a lonely, alienated and isolated figure.
See Conry (1974)
Whether formulated as ‘milieu’ in singular or in plural.
Some neo-Lamarckists were involved at some stage of their career in civil service for ‘La République’.
Ribot wrote “They affirmed being evolutionists and not at all (neo)criticists”(letter to Espinas 30 September 1884).
Memoirs by Mauss (1925), Davy (1919, 1960) and Durkheim’s correspondence with Mauss (1998) (ed. Besnard and Fournier), see especially Chimisso (2008), Fournier (2013), Karady (1976), Lukes (1973) and Strensky (1997, 2006). All Durkheim archives were destroyed by the Nazis, and almost all surviving correspondence does not relate to the above period.
See Perrier, fn 53.
Around twenty texts.
Including the discovered reviews he had written for the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 1903–1915, (Durkheim 2003).
Durkheim’s positions had evolved, and often interpretations of his work have assumed either continuity or rupture and/or drastic change. Therefore, I stress chronology and deploy for my analysis all the writings and correspondence appearing in the reference list.
Schmaus (2000) dedicated to it a detailed analysis, when it was first published in French. However, he did not relate to Durkheim’s position on evolutionized biology. On Sens lectures:
http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/reviews/Sens.Schamus.html downloaded 19/12/2000.
Études Durkheimiennes, Fall (1993, pp. 15–17).
e.g., « Claude Bernard, lui aussi, suit une méthode évolutionniste quand il explique toute la vie organique par la génération» ibid p.16.
Goldstein (2013) has argued that a particular style of philosophizing, stemming from a Cousinian notion of ‘self’, was anchored institutionally in this teaching from 1820 until 1925, though changing significantly after 1880. Durkheim would soon criticize these lycée studies and agrégation in comparison with German universities. “The safest assumption is that he [Durkheim] would indeed have felt constrained both topically and substantially… to avoid expressing views that were too radical or idiosyncaratic”. Gross (2004, p. 20).
See Ribot (1877). This, indeed sat well with Spencer as the principal focus of criticism by old-time positivists, spiritualists and neo-critics such as Renouvier.
« Tout les individus sont le développement les uns des autres, et dérives tous d’un type primordial unique. La nécessité de l’adaptation au milieu suscite dans l’organisme de l’être des ‘heureuses modifications qui le perfectionnent. La sélection supprime ou relégue les êtres qui n’ont pas subis ces modifications. L’hérédité les fixe enfin en fait un attribut de l’espe`ce.» Durkheim (2004 [1882-3], p. 111).
Ibid pp. 301–302.
Schaeffle, regarded as marginally a member of the group of political economy university professors, so-called ‘socialists of the chair’ including also Wagner and Schmoller, on whose work Durkheim wrote after his stay in German universities.
Schaeffle was sharply critical of the classical Manchester school. In 1888, Durkheim wrote a short note to defend Schaeffle against liberal-economic critiques. Relevant here is his comment on the author’s awareness of the ‘organic complexity’ of societies.
“… as Spencer expressed it, they are a useful scaffolding, but one which masks reality from us.”
Schaeffle review, translation 112. The expression ‘scaffolding’ was used by Bernard, in discussing the role of hypotheses. Bernard was posited here as an exemplum of constituting the autonomy of biology, separating it from chemistry, physics and metaphysics.
Espinas was omitted in the middle period and Montesquieu came up, Comte disappeared in the late work while St. Simon was added. Sometime in the early 1900s the non-French, i.e., German, disappeared.
Durkheim criticized Gumplowicz harshly on his position in the resuscitated controversy on mono-and -poly-genesis and its ethnological implications.
e.g., Gumplowitz, p. 634. Echoed in Rom Harré almost a century later. See Martin and Harré (1982).
The historicity of societies served as an occasion to discuss modes of useful remembering and forgetting, thus resonating both with Ribot’s book on The Diseases of Memory 1882 and Nietzsche’s second untimely meditation.
1.Les études de science sociale—on Spencer:, A. Regnard, A. coste, Aug.Burdueau, L.Arréat, A.Schaeffle; 2. Guillaume De Greef.
Les études p. 78.
Not incidentally echoing the ‘utile’ of late eighteenth-century revolutionary science.
On the cultural impact of the defeat on France see Digeon (1959).
Liard was also involved in securing his position at the University of Bordeaux.
Later on Durkheim became an active member of the association.
Yet, at the time of his stay: « …c’est surtout dans les sciences sociales que l’hypothèse évolutioniste a été acceptée avec cette facilité.» (RIE, p. 330, fn.3).
Referring to Ribot’s contribution to intellectual life, such as the Spencer translations, and the advancement of Psychology.
« Le moraliste n'a pas plus à la reconstruire que le physiologiste a' refaire l’organisme».
e.g. in differing ways in Primitive Classification 1901, and in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912.
e.g. « M. Wundt se refuse absolutement a` appliquer a` la morale l’hypothèse de la sélection naturelle. La lutte pour la vie est un produit de l`égoisme …»Durkheim (1887b, pp. 126–127).
See e.g. Lukes (1973) and Turner (1986).
e.g. La science positive 279.
Lukes quotes from the account on Durkheim in his file at the university, where he was described as a young teacher, severe looking, original and dedicated to the utmost degree (Lukes 1973, chap. 5).
‘family’ or ‘domestic organization’ and morality were two fields to which Durkheim dedicated much thought at Bordeaux and at the Sorbonne. Durkheim edited and wrote numerous reviews in the section on forms of domestic organization in the journal he edited L’Année Sociologique. According to Mauss he intended to publish a book on this topic but died in 1917, and very little survived from his numerous courses. A bit more survived, and was later published, of his courses and writings on the issues of morals, their institutions, and penal law.
In the age-old controversy on structures and functions he adopted the FNL view on the priority of function. Note this transfer from the biological to the sociological seemed to him to allow one to disregard possible differences in conscious and non-conscious functioning.
Esp. La science positive pp. 55–56.
Which prefigures the famous saying in Rules.
Indeed in Division Durkheim went into great detail in explicating the uniqueness of sociology vis-à-vis biology.
This legitimated the use of anthropological materials, and could be looked upon as a sore point in the much later disagreement with Fustel de Coulanges, Durkheim’s much admired teacher. e.g. Momigliano (1970).
He suggested applying J.S. Mill’s notion of concomitant variations, which Mill himself (6th book of A System of Logic) rejected for use in the social sciences. Selecting its technical aspect only, Durkheim argued that in social life there would be many more parallel variants. This was also one of the justifications for the use of statistics. Cf. the notion of ‘natural experiment’ recurred in various contemporaneous medical and psychological writings, including Ribot’s.
The conjugal family: “…by virtue of a general law already observed in biology …” p. 233.
Conry claims that within the context of use of this notion, Milne Edwards was instrumental in the divergence of FNL from contemporaneous Darwinism.
e.g. Espinas used the adjective ‘organic’ for spontaneous social organization in which there was a coordination among individuals who concurrently formed ‘an organ’ of that society. Durkheim used this adjective to characterize modern societies. In his review of Gumplowitz he stated that the model of (physical) mechanism could not be adequate for depicting modern societies.
Involved also in the ‘principle of association’ in Perrier (especially in Le Transformisme).
An earlier version of this was used in the ‘German articles’ discussing ‘state of current’ versus ‘state of crystallized’.
In both the opening lesson on the sociology of the family and in the Tonniës review, Durkheim provided a concise description of these types of society and of solidarity.
Even the notion, actually picked up from Spencer and somewhat transformed, of the role of ‘volume and density’ of society was introduced in these articles as part and parcel of the new field.
Tönnies complained later that Durkheim understood neither his methodology (of ideal types) nor his notion of Gesellschaft, as divulged in his critique of Durkheim’s Rules (Archiv für systematische Philosophie, Band IV, 1898), but already 1896 on The Division of Labor.
Note that such typology was introduced first in Comte arguing for a fit between types of societies, cultures and sciences, and then in Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, where the emphasis was on patterns of social relations, institutions, economies and political regimes.
‘Organic’ qualifying modern societies, emphatically so in Divison, disappeared when the specific conceptualizing that was helped by this transfer changed.
Suicide and Fertility, a Study of Moral Statistics.
“…for all phenomena of life there is a normal area on either side of which they become pathological”. Suicide and Fertility, p. 193.
I modified the translation of ‘indice’as ‘index’.
e.g. “… for human society which are part of nature (p. 10); …he (Montesquieu) derives the laws from the nature” not of man but of the social organism (p. 21); “They (morals, trade, etc.) are the elements of or organs of the social organism… they are actually parts of a whole” (p. 56).
Barberis (2003).
Limoges (1994, 1998).
“If individual life is not worth something/does not have any value/, as little as that would be, then the rest is worth nothing/has no worth” (“Si la vie individuelle ne vaut pas quelque chose, si peu que ce soit, la reste ne vaut rien” (Science positive 140, my translation).
Following the notion that each disciplinary realm had its own distinctive features, as expounded by Boutroux.
Durkheim was particularly impressed with Wundt’s teaching seminar in his laboratory, which Durkheim viewed as a collective enterprise whose results constituted the field of experimental physiological psychology. I suggest that such a model of collective enterprise formed the kernel of Durkheim’s efforts in Bordeaux to found a sociological collective, producing the journal L’Année Sociologique (1896-1912) to serve as such ‘laboratory’.
Later and for a while (e.g., in his two books, of 1893 and 1895) he used Bernard’s ‘two environments’ conception of internal and external.
Especially in Montesquieu.
e.g. Suicide et Natalité, 462; Montesquieu 58. Davy 1953 criticized his use of ‘progress’ as a tool to criticize both Montesqueu and Comte, (Introduction pp. 144–154, originally Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 1949 July–October).
Course in sociology:opening lecture, 1888, p. 55.
Abbreviations
- ENS:
-
École normale supérieure
- FNL:
-
French neo-Lamarckism
- RIE:
-
Revue Internationale de l’Enseignement
- RP:
-
Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger
- SL:
-
Spencerian Lamarckism
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I am deeply grateful to Karen Rader and Marsha Richmond, former co-editors- in- chief of the journal, for their perspicacity and patience, and to the anonymous reviewers of the diverse versions, who offered wise and helpful critical comments which made the paper a much better and sharper one, thereby demonstrating the meaning of collectivity in scientific endeavor.
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Gissis, S.B. The Neo-Lamarckian Tools Deployed by the Young Durkheim: 1882–1892. J Hist Biol 56, 153–190 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09708-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09708-w