30 



THE HISTORY OF ECOLOGY 



Lamarck's contiibutions are more widely 

 known as a result of the publicity, mainly 

 adverse, given to his now generally aban- 

 doned tlieory of evolution through the 

 inheritance of characters acquired by use 

 and disuse or by a more direct effect of the 

 environment. Lamarck summed up his con- 

 clusions in the Histoire Naturelle des Ani- 

 maux sans Vertebres (Paris, 1815; cf. 

 Dendy, 1914, p. 382). Lamarck's Philo- 

 sophie Zoologique (1809) is better known. 

 He placed the effects of needs and of re- 

 sulting habits of animals, together with 

 their manner of life and the conditions 

 under which their ancestors have Hved, in 

 the forefront of his explanation of the 

 bodily form and general qualities of a given 

 animal. 



Darwin's (and Wallace's) theory of evo- 

 lution is based on principles equally 

 ecological though radically different. 

 Among the important ones we may recog- 

 nize Malthusian overpopulation and the 

 resulting struggle for existence with ensuing 

 natiiral selection. Except for the fundamen- 

 tal part, which is concerned with the 

 nonenvironmental origin of many, probably 

 of the majority, of heritable variations, the 

 remainder of the factors involved in Dar- 

 win's theory are now recognized as being 

 clearly ecological in nature. The exception 

 just noted is even more important than Dar- 

 vvin thought, since he was not altogether 

 free from Lamarckian enviromnentaUsm. 

 The ecological substratum of Darwin's and 

 of Wallace's thinking is brought into 

 clearer hght when we recall the extent to 

 which each was influenced by zoogeo- 

 graphic considerations. 



The supporting theory of geographic iso- 

 lation (Wagner, 1868; Gulick, 1888, 1905) 

 also grew out of zoogeographic studies and 

 has even more of an ecological bent than 

 does general Darwinian theory. 



It would be interesting, and perhaps not 

 without value, to consider briefly the rea- 

 sons for the failure of some early ecologists 

 to recognize and insist upon the close con- 

 nection between their newly vivified subject 

 and the important generalizations of evolu- 

 tionary theory. Perhaps, however, such a 

 discussion can be dismissed with the sug- 

 gestion that a part of the psychology 

 involved is not wholly unlike that of a 

 vigorous adolescent in establishing his inde- 

 pendence from actively possessive parents. 



From a certain viewpoint, there are two 



main approaches to the phenomena oi 

 ecology and of biology in general, and each 

 yields its element of truth. The more usual 

 approach has been by way of the 

 individuaUstic, egocentric position of the 

 neo-Darwinians that Darwin himself empha- 

 sized. This approach is usually developed 

 about some phase of person-to-person com- 

 petition, and hence the word "competition" 

 has wrongly come to be wholly associated 

 with the harmful interactions of organisms 

 that yield results which are the opposite of 

 cooperations, and may be called disopera- 

 tions. The history of the use of this 

 approach is almost identical with much of 

 that of evolutionary theory since Darwin's 

 time. Opposed to the individuaUstic empha- 

 sis, there is the concern with group-cen- 

 tered, more or less altruistic tendencies, 

 such as have frequently been considered 

 under the heading of cooperation, which 

 careful students nowadays consider as en- 

 tirely nonconscious proto-cooperation in all 

 lower forms. The word itself in this connec- 

 tion should imply merely that the 

 interactions under consideration are more 

 beneficial than harmful for individuals or 

 group units. 



The germ of the idea of natural coopera- 

 tion, along with that of natural selection, 

 can be traced to the biologically absurd 

 poetry of Empedocles (p. 14). Thereafter 

 the idea was kept somewhat alive, often in 

 barely recognizable form, by the succession 

 of thinkers from Aristotle to Herbert Spen- 

 cer and others who saw human society as a 

 natural outgrowth from the hfe of other 

 animals. They were opposed by an equally 

 impressive succession of men who thought 

 of society as an artifact. A fairly exhaustive 

 history of this phase of the subject is given 

 by Espinas (1877). 



More positive philosophical emphasis on 

 the nonegocentric interpretation of nature 

 began with Anthony Cooper, third earl of 

 Shaftesbury, who about 1700 recognized 

 that racial drives exist that can be explained 

 only by their advantage to the group. Adam 

 Smith emphasized the same qualities in his 

 Theory of Moral Seiitiments (1759) under 

 the heading of "sympathy" or "fellow feel- 

 ing"; his more famous Inquiry into the 

 Wealth of Nations" (1776) is completely 

 based on the opposed force of self-interest^ 

 and he did not publicly reconcile the two. 

 Later, Feuerbach (1846-1890) emphasized 

 the same idea under the heading of "love," 



