Bednarczyk Andrzej
Instytut Filozofii, Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Kwart Hist Nauki Tech. 2009;54(3-4):31-98.
The author of the paper has made an attempt to prove that a teleological interpretation of Lamarck's theory is false. It is unwarranted to attribute to Lamarck the idea that a living organism has an internal tendency to complicate its organization and to improve its mode of functioning; such a concept is not confirmed by existing textual evidence, and it is also in direct conflict with Lamarck's undisputed mechanicism. The proof presented in the paper begins with an outline of the history of this false interpretation, including the opinions of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. As the tendency is ascribed also to nature itself, the next phase of the proof has involved reconstructing the fully ateleological notion of nature to which Lamarck subscribed. Supposed evidence for the tendency is said to be provided by the existence of a series in which the organization of a living body grows from the simplest to the most complex. That is why the author of the current paper has analysed the concept of série animale used by Lamarck in some detail, in order to demonstrate that it is typological in character, and has nothing to do with the tendency that is allegedly inherent in the nature of an organism. Also presented in the paper, in connection with the construction of the series, is the problem of spontaneous generation, which was made complicated by Lamarck. Finally, the very notion of tendency is analysed and confronted with Lamarck's text; the latter in fact does not contain any explanations that would be teleological in the strict sense of the word. The analysis has enabled the author of the current paper to conduct an exegesis of the fragment of Lamarck's text which might give grounds to it being construed in terms of an explanation resorting to the notion of tendency, and possible interpretations of that fragment have been presented. The paper ends with a description of the mechanism which, according to Lamarck, is responsible for the rise in complexity of an organism that has the nature of a machine; such a mechanism leaves no place for any tendency to be in operation.
该论文的作者试图证明对拉马克理论的目的论解释是错误的。将生物有机体具有使其组织复杂化并改善其功能模式的内在倾向这一观点归因于拉马克是毫无根据的；现有文本证据并未证实这一概念，而且它也与拉马克无可争议的机械论直接冲突。论文中给出的证明首先概述了这种错误解释的历史，包括查尔斯·莱尔和查尔斯·达尔文的观点。由于这种倾向也被归因于自然本身，证明的下一阶段涉及重构拉马克所赞同的完全非目的论的自然概念。据说支持这种倾向的证据是存在一个系列，在这个系列中，生物体的组织从最简单发展到最复杂。这就是为什么本文作者详细分析了拉马克使用的“动物系列”概念，以表明它具有类型学特征，与据称生物体本质中固有的倾向毫无关系。论文还结合系列的构建提出了自发产生的问题，拉马克使这个问题变得复杂。最后，对倾向这一概念进行了分析，并与拉马克的文本进行对照；事实上，后者并不包含任何严格意义上属于目的论的解释。通过分析，本文作者能够对拉马克文本中可能使人将其解释为诉诸倾向概念的片段进行注释，并给出了对该片段的可能解释。论文最后描述了一种机制，按照拉马克的说法，这种机制导致了具有机器性质的生物体复杂性的增加；这样一种机制没有给任何倾向发挥作用留下空间。
