Zoological Philosophy on Superphysics

PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE

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an enquiry into the causes of life, of physical and moral sensitiveness, and, in short, of the lofty functions which he possesses.

It was first necessary to try to acquire knowledge of the organisation of the other animals. It was necessary to consider the differences which exist among them in this respect, as well as the relationships which are found between their special functions and the organisation with which they are endowed.

The Influence of Circumstances on the Actions and Habits of Animals

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The Role of Art in the Productions of Nature

The ‘artistic parts in the natural sciences’ are 3:

Orders, Families

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Orders

This is the main divisions which initially divide a class.

If these divisions promote a method for creating others by subdividing them, these subdivisions are no longer orders. It would be very inconvenient to give them that name.

The Genus, Genera

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The Genus, Genera

This is groups of races, called species, brought together by considering their interconnections.

This is a small limited series by the characteristics with which one chooses arbitrarily to define them.

The Importance of Considering Affinities

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Among living bodies, ‘affinity’ is the similarity of traits of the the most essential parts of 2 things being compared.

The more extensive and similar these traits, the more significant the affinities between the objects.

The Importance of Considering Affinities

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The affinities in plants are determined solely by the parts essential for reproduction. The importance of these parts are ranked as:

The embryo, its accessories (the cotyledons, the perisperm), and the seed which contains it;

The Influence of Circumstances on the Actions and Habits of Animals

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Speciation Among Living Things and the Idea Attached to Speciation

Each species is influenced by circumstances over a long period.

Lamarck's Principles

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In order to give the idea of species has some real foundation, let us look at following points:

All organic bodies of our earth are true products of nature, which she has brought forth successively over a long period of time;

General Observations on Animals; Extinct Species

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A forceful and sustained change in the environment and in the habits and ways of life of animals creates a very remarkable change in the individuals exposed to it.

A bird which flies fast but is locked in a cage will lose most of its lightness and agility.

General Observations of Animals

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Some animals crawl, march, run, or jump, while others fly, raising themselves in the air and travelling through different spaces.

Nature achieves through step by step

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Nature achieves nothing except step by step.

An enormous length of time and considerable variation in the sequence of circumstances for nature to lead the organic structure of animals to the complexity and development that we see in those who are the most improved.

Definition of Animals and Plants

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Definition of Animals

Animals are living organic bodies, endowed with permanently irritable parts.

Almost all of them digest the food with which they are nourished, and being subject to motion, some as a result of will power, whether free or dependent, and others as a result of their stimulated irritability.

The Distribution and Classification of Animals

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Why do we need to distribute and classify animals?*

The Present Classification of Animals

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Since the purpose and the principles, whether of the general distribution of living beings or of their classification, have not been noticed when we concerned ourselves with these matters, the works of naturalists suffered for a long time from this imperfection of our ideas.

Distribution of Animals Established by Linnaeus

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Finally Linnaeus, a man of a superior genius and one of the greatest known naturalists, after having collected the facts and taught us to use great accuracy in the determination of characteristics for all the orders, gave us the following distribution for the animals/

Classes of Animals Without Vertebrae

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These examples of perfection first established in parts of a classification.

Later, they were destroyed by others.

Then they were reestablished by the necessity and the pressure of things in the natural sciences.

Degradation and Simplification in the Organic Structure

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The extremes of the chain of animal life are:

Mammals

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These are animals:

with mammary glands, 4 articulated limbs and all the essential organs of the most perfect animals
with hair on some parts of the body

The mammals are located at one of the extremities of the animal chain displaying the most perfect animals, the most rich in organic structure and faculties.

Birds

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These are animals:

without mammary glands
with 2 feet and 2 arms shaped into wings
with feathers cover the body

The second rank belongs to the birds.

If we do not find in these animals such a large number of faculties and as great an intelligence as in the animals of the first rank, they are the only ones except for the monotremes, who have, like the mammals, a heart with two ventricles and two auricles, warm blood, a skull cavity entirely filled by a brain, and the trunk always contained in ribs.

Invertebrate Animals

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When we reach invertebrate animals, we enter an immense series of different animals, the most numerous in nature, the most curious and the most interesting with respect to the affinities in the observable differences of organic structure and faculties.

Reptiles

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Animals with only 1 ventricle in the heart and still possessing a respiratory lung, but an incomplete one.

Their skin is smooth or furnished with scales.

In the third rank are placed, naturally and necessarily, the reptiles. They are going to provide us with new and greater proofs of the degradation in organic structure from one end to the other in the animal chain, starting at the most perfect animals.

Fish

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These animals:

breathe through gills,
have a smooth skin or covered with scales
have fins.

This degradation in organic structure and in the number of faculties manifested in the total collection of animals, we see that fish must necessarily be placed in the fourth rank, that is, after the reptiles. They have, in fact, an organic structure still less perfected than that of the reptiles, and thus, more distant from that of the most perfect animals.

Cirrhipedes And Annelids

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Cirrhipedes

These are animals:

without eyes
breathing by gills
having a mantle and articulated arms with a horny skin.

We know only 4 genera of cirrhipedes.

They must be considered as forming a special class because they cannot be included in any other class of invertebrate animals.

Crustaceans

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Animals having a body and articulated limbs, a crustaceous skin, a circulation system, and breathing by gills.

At this point we enter into the numerous series of animals in which the body and especially the limbs are articulated and the integuments are crustaceous, horny, or coriaceous.

Arachnids 9th Rank

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These are animals:

breathing by narrow trachea
not undergoing any transformation
with articulated limbs
with eyes in their heads

The ninth rank belongs to the arachnids.

They have so many affinities with the crustaceans, that we are always compelled to bring them close together.

Insects

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These are imperfect animals:

undergoing transformations of form with 2 eyes and 2 antennae on the head, 6 limbs, and 2 trachea extending throughout the entire body.
do not have arteries, no veins
breathe by air through a trachea which are not limited
born in a state less perfect than that in which they reproduce, consequently undergo metamorphosis.

They come after the arachnids.

Worms (11th Rank)

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These are animals:

with soft, long bodies
without a head, eyes, articulated limbs, a longitudinal marrow, and a system of circulation

I classify 2 kinds of worms:

intestinal

These do not have any vessels for circulation

Radiates (12th Rank)

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These are animals:

with a regenerating body
without a head, eyes, articulated limbs
with a mouth on the under surface, and a radiating arrangement in their internal and external parts.

These:

Polyps

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These are animals:

with a sub-gelatinous and regenerating body
without any special organs, other than an alimentary canal with a single opening
with a terminal mouth, together with radiating tentacles or a ciliate and rotating organ.

Here, the imperfection and the simplicity in the organic structure are very evident.

Modifications in Plants

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All botanists know that the plants which they take from the place where they were born to the gardens where they are cultivated undergo there gradual changes which end up making them unrecognizable.

Infusorians

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These are infinitely small animals, with gelatinous transparent bodies, homogenous and very contractile;

They have no specially distinct interior organ, but often with oviform gemmules.

They show on the outside no radiating tentacles nor rotary organs.

The Laws of Evolution of Lamarck

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The true order of things involves recognizing the following:

All slightly remarkable changes later maintained in circumstances where each race of animals is located works to create in that race a real change in its needs.

The Influence of Circumstances

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What we are now concerned with is not a rational speculation but the examination of a reliable fact, a more universal one than people think and something to which we have neglected to pay the attention it deserves.

Favourable times and circumstances

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In my ‘Research Into Living Bodies (p. 50)’ I laid down the following proposition:

It is not the organs, that is, the nature and the form of the animal’s body parts, which cause habits and special faculties. In contrast, its habits, manner of life, and circumstances of the individuals from which the animal comes to possess, over time, the form of its body, the number and condition of its organs, and finally the faculties which it enjoys.

Disappearing Ears and Legs

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Ears

But the ear is different.

Sound* is set in motion by the shock or the vibration of bodies.

The Laws of Evolution of Lamarck

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Needs are always induced by circumstances.

Satisfying those needs:

modifies the organs
removes these same organs when they are not needed.

The fish which swim in large bodies of water have a need to see laterally.

The Sloth

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When willpower determines that an animal carry out some action or other, the organs which must execute this action are immediately stimulated by the inflow of subtle fluids (the nervous fluids).

Personal Conclusion

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Conclusion 1 (of the people)*

Nature, in creating the animals, anticipated all the possible circumstances they would encounter.

And so it gave to each species:

a fixed organic structure
a determined and invariable form for its parts

This forces each species to:

The Natural Order of animals

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Chapter 5 said that the essential aim of a distribution of animals must not limit itself to the possession of a list of classes, genera, and species.

The 6 Stages

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I have divided into 6 very distinct stages all the styles of organic structure in the animal ladder.

Of these 6 stages, the 4 first ones include the animals without vertebrae.

Class 1: Infusorians

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These do not have any vertebral column and consequently have no skeleton.

Those which have points of support for the movement of parts have them under their teguments.

Class 2: Polyps

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Stage 2

These are gemmiparous animals:

with gelatinous regenerating bodies
without any interior organ except an alimentary canal with a single opening.
with terminal mouth surrounded by radiating tentacles with ciliated or rotatory organs.

The majority adhere to each other, communicate together by their alimentary canal, and thus form composite animals.

Class 3: Radiates

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Stage 2

No longitudinal ganglionic chord, no vessels for circulation; a few special internal organs (either tubes or pores taking in water or species of ovaries) other than those for digestion.

Class 4: Worms

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These are suboviparous animals:

with soft elongated bodies, without a head, eyes, limbs, or bunches of setae
without circulation and with a complete intestinal canal (one with two openings).
- Mouth made up of one or several suckers.

Observations

The general form of worms is very different from that of the radiates. Their mouths, always a sucker, has no similarity to those of the polyps, which display only an aperture accompanied by radiating tentacles or rotatory organs.

Class 5: Insects

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[The Insects and Arachnids]

INSECTS

Oviparous animals, undergoing metamorphoses, able to have wings, and possessing, in the perfect state, six articulated limbs, two antennae, two faceted eyes, and a horny skin.

Class 6: Arachnids

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These are oviparous animals with articulated limbs and eyes in the head.

They:

do not undergo a metamorphosis and never possess wings or elytra
have stigmata and limited trachaea for respiration
have a rudimentary circulation system
have several fertilizations in a lifetime

Observations

The arachnids, which in the order which we have established come after the insects, show clear progress in the perfecting of organic structure.

Class 7: Crustaceans

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Fourth Degree of Organic Structure

Nerves terminating in a longitudinal ganglionic chord or in a brain without a spinal chord; respiration with gills; arteries and veins for circulation.

[The Crustaceans, the Annelids, the Cirripeds and the Mollusks]

Class 8: Annelids

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Oviparous animals with an elongated body, which is soft and ringed laterally, rarely having eyes and a distinct head, and lacking articulated limbs. Arteries and veins for circulation; respiration by gills; a longitudinal ganglionic chord.

Class 11: Fish

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Vertebrates

They have a vertebral column made up of a multitude of short bones, articulated and arranged in a linear sequence.

This column serves to hold up the body, establishes the basis of the skeleton, provides a sheath for the spinal chord, and terminates at the anterior end with a bony container which contains the brain.

Class 12: Reptiles

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Viviparous animals, with vertebra and cold blood; breathing incompletely by a lung, at least in their later life; with a smooth skin or one covered in scales or a bony shell.

Class 13: Birds

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SIXTH DEGREE OF ORGANIC STRUCTURE

Nerves ending at a spinal chord and a brain which fills the cranial case; heart with two ventricles and warm blood.

[Birds and Mammals]

(Thirteenth Class of the Animal Kingdom)

Class 14: Mammals

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(Fourteenth Class of the Animal Kingdom)

Viviparous animals with mammary glands; four articulated limbs, or only two; respiration entirely by lungs which are not pierced on the outside; hair on some parts of the body.

Bimanes

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Naturalists who have considered man have formed out of the 6 known varieties a particular genus.

Man alone makes up a separate family, characterized in the following way:

Mammals with separate limbs with nails; three types of teeth and opposable thumbs only on the hands