A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



exposition of the same doctrine appeared in his Re- 

 cherches sur V Organisation des Corps Vivants. It is 

 singular, too, that Lamarck, in his Hydrogeologie of the 

 same date, should independently have suggested "bi- 

 ology" as an appropriate word to express the general 

 science of living things. It is significant of the ten- 

 dency of thought of the time that the need of such a 

 unifying word should have presented itself simulta- 

 neously to independent thinkers in different countries. 



That same memorable year, Lorenz Oken, another 

 philosophical naturalist, professor in the University of 

 Zurich, published the preliminary outlines of his Phi- 

 losophic der Natur, which, as developed through later 

 publications, outlined a theory of spontaneous genera- 

 tion and of evolution of species. Thus it appears that 

 this idea was germinating in the minds of several of the 

 ablest men of the time during the first decade of our 

 century. But the singular result of their various expli- 

 cations was to give sudden check to that undercurrent 

 of thought which for some time had been setting tow- 

 ards this conception. As soon as it was made clear 

 whither the concession that animals may be changed by 

 their environment must logically trend, the recoil from 

 the idea was instantaneous and fervid. Then for a gen- 

 eration Cuvier was almost absolutely dominant, and his 

 verdict was generally considered final. 



There was, indeed, one naturalist of authority in 

 France who had the hardihood to stand out against 

 Cuvier and his school, and who was in a position to 

 gain a hearing, though by no means to divide the fol- 

 lowing. This was Etienne GeofTroy Saint-Hilaire, the 

 famous author of the Philosophic Anatomique, and for 



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