Evolutionary Phreno-Geology

Eight years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, J. Stanley Grimes issued his book Phreno-Geology: The Progressive Creation of Man, Indicated by Natural History, and Confirmed by Discoveries That Connect the Organization and Functions of the Brain With Successive Geological Periods. It seems to have been forgotten, perhaps because the "science" of phrenology fell out of favor, but as we approach the "evolution year" it is profitable to look back on other ideas of evolution that have largely been forgotten. Charles Darwin was not the first to think that organisms evolve, even if he is the most celebrated evolutionary theorist of all time, and Grimes presents an alternate explanation for the successive changes seen in the geological record.

Grimes laid out his main points early on in Phreno-Geology. He aimed to illustrate that;

1. That the organs of the human brain are added and superadded in a manner such as they would be if they had been successively created to conform to the geological changes which took place after the first animal was created.

2. That the convolutions of the brain are arranged as they would be if caused gradually by the pressure of the brain during birth.

3. That the pons and the callosum are added to hold the two hemispheres together.

4. That the physiognomy of man was created and caused by his habits while he was yet below the standard of modern humanity.

5. That, instead of the earth being created for the animals which it contains, and adapted to them, man, and all other animals, have been created by the agency of the infinite variety of stimulating circumstances which have been brought to bear upon organized bodies during the immense periods of time indicated by geology.

[emphasis mine]

What were these "stimulating circumstances ... brought to beat upon organized bodies"? To understand Grimes' evolutionary program, we must first understand that he did not see the continuous adaptation of animals to their conditions as "improvements." Instead, animals only changed when they would be at a disadvantage to remain the same. Changing conditions required new adaptations, as if they had to sprint forward to stay in place. Grimes used the origin of lungs as an example;

At the time when no animals with lungs existed, it would have been no improvement to have made fishes with lungs, for they could not have used them ; nor would human brains have been any improvement, but rather the reverse. But when the atmosphere was purified of its carbon and vapor, and the earth rose from the sea, and became fertile and salubrious, animals underwent a corresponding change, which did not improve them, but merely adapted them to the changed circumstances.

Animals were well-adapted to their environments, and there was no reason for them to change unless there was some alteration in ecology that made a new adaptation profitable. This allowed Grimes to derive the new from the old;

From whence did the new race spring? It may have sprung from the old race; for if, amid the general destruction of the old race, a single pair were so situated, or possessed of such an idio-syncracy, as to be able to sustain the shock of new circumstances, and survive, -- bending and modifying its organization to the new conditions, -- from this pair would spring a new race, to swarm in the same region, which would seem like a newly-created genus.

Changing conditions would sweep away the original species, but sometimes it might spare a few individuals with variations ("idiosyncracies") that would then proliferate and seem like a newly-created form. If this pattern was true, Grimes reasoned, then it was likely that similar creatures that had only slight differences between them arose from a common stock;

When we see a whole class of animals distinguished from other classes by some slight peculiarity, we may well suspect, in harmony with these principles, that originally they constituted one class, and that the difference which distinguishes them was owing to the difference in their circumstances during a sufficient length of time. When we see an immense subdivision of the animal kingdom having some very essential and fundamental organs in common, which they exhibit under a thousand forms, we may reasonably suspect that the time was when but one of these forms existed, and that all sprung from that one. This suspicion is confirmed, when geology shows us, in the plainest and most unequivocal manner, that there was certainly a time when but one of these forms existed, and that was the simplest of all. It is surely natural to infer that the existing forms sprung from the first form ; and it is not reasonable to suppose that each slight variation from the first form was a special miracle, a separate and isolated creation, without any connection with other forms. Nothing but a most profound sense of religious duty will induce us to entertain such a mode of reasoning; and we feel relieved when we find that duty demands no such violation of common sense.

What Grimes described was common ancestry, and it appears that life was a branching bush, starting with one simple form and expanding in complexity and diversity through time. Sketching the course of evolutionary history;

It may have been that all animals sprung from one common and universal monadic form, some of which became vertebrated, and others invertebrated ; but it is more than probable that all vertebrate animals were originally fishes, of one form, and derived from one pair. It is a startling and interesting thought, that fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, had one pair for their common ancestors.

Grimes also recognized that organizing vertebrates from "lowest" (fish) to "highest" (mammals) did not constitute an evolutionary series. In a startling anticipation of some of the debates going on today about the utility of terms like "fish" and "reptile" Grimes wrote;

Vertebrated animals are arranged by all naturalists in the following order: 1. Fishes;. 2. Reptiles; 3. Birds; 4. Mammals; and it might, therefore, be thought that my doctrine implies that all mammals must have necessarily passed through all these grades, before they could arrive at their present organization. But when we consider that birds are but a higher order of reptiles, -- that they are, in fact, but feathered, flying reptiles, just as a bat is a flying mammal ; when we reflect that a bird is but a fish that has lived in the air until he breathes it copiously and perfectly, unmingled with water, and has been exposed to the cold until his skin is covered with feathers, instead of scales, -- we shall readily perceive that a mammal might just as well be descended directly from a reptile as from a bird...

Rodents may have been descended from birds, but this was more of a hypothetical aside. The main point Grimed argued was that we cannot rank creatures as "higher" and "lower" because each was well-adapted to their circumstances. (Even though he did use terms like "higher" and "lower" in referring to different groups.) Different animals, even insects, were superior to humans in different ways, so it could not be said that our species was undoubtedly superior.

Grimes also noted that change was contingent on what had come before. The advanced organs of animals like birds could be found in more rudimentary form elsewhere, suggesting that these animals too could eventually reach a similar state of development. Related to this idea, Grimes proposed that apes (along with other lineages) may have had some defining traits before they even left the water, and speculated;

It may be that the ancient idea of mermaids was not entirely fabulous ; and a species of sea mammal, as nearly resembling a chimpanzee as the seal resembles the dog, may have but lately become extinct, as many other animals have done.

Indeed, Grimes thought that the defining characters of some terrestrial lineages were first obtained in the water, and humans were a prime example. Contrary to what he had written earlier about the superiority of one form or another, he asserted that the ancestors of humans could never have walked on all fours, as that would have degraded and stunted our ancestors;

Apes and men may have been alike when they both inhabited the ocean; but the apes degraded themselves beyond redemption, by acquiring the habit of walking on their hands, as this circumstance prevented them from acquiring those arts which gave superiority to man, and enabled him to exist in cold regions.

But how did the new adaptations actually arise? That evolution occurred was clear, but what was the more proximal mechanism that caused creatures to change? Grimes related the origin of new organs to the formation of crystals. Particular arrangements of elements in certain circumstances produced particular crystals, and Grimes supposed it was the same with animals. Variation did not exist because offspring varied from their parents (Grimes asserted that the opposite was true) but because of the action of the environment on the individual.

As has been made clear, Grimes thought that the environment had to change before the different influences would affect organisms, and some (Grimes favored a single pair of any given creatures under pressure) had tolerances that could withstand the alterations the environment caused. Actual, physical variations were not something inherent in creatures but were instead caused by the environment; Grimes was proposing a Lamarckian-type of natural selection where individuals were adapted during their own lives. Grimes drew an analogy to a ball to make his point;

Everything in existence is bathed in stimuli, and continually buffeted, at every point, by other surrounding things, so that it must necessarily adapt itself to them. If we take a ball and place it where every part of its surface is continually chafed, and every part equally so, it will become smaller, but it will retain precisely the same form to the last. So, also, if the ball is placed in a liquid, the particles of which are continually being precipitated upon the surface of the ball, at every point equally, the ball will continually grow larger, but it will retain its form perfect to the last. But if the surface of the ball is not equally affected, one part receiving much and the other little of the precipitate, -- one part being chafed and worn away, while the other is nourished by additions, -- of course, under these circumstances, the form will change, until the inequality of action is discontinued.

It might take several generations of reaction to the environment to produce a perfected version of a particular form, but Grimes was clear that new adaptations were direct reactions to the environment just like callouses on a blacksmith's hands.

Grimes supported this idea by reducing biology to chemistry. If we are all just differently arranged lumps of animated elements and compounds, than differences in forces (stimuli) can force a rearrangement of constituent particles into new form. This process was a gradual one, but it was not the same as the cumulative mechanism Darwin explained in 1859. (Curiously, the brain seemed to be an exception to this. In the summary at the end of the attached book A New System of Phrenology, it states that the "organs" of the brain do not change due to employment, education, or any other voluntary activity.)

Indeed, Grimes' Lamarckian preference becomes clear in a later chapter in which he criticizes the popular book Vestiges of Creation for dismissing the important of external factors in evolutionary development. Grimes wrote;

I consider the external circumstances of animals as the causes of their changes, and the sub- creators of their species. The changes which any animal undergoes during its lifetime, before it becomes a parent, -- these changes are impressed upon the organization of its offspring, because the offspring resembles its parents as they were constituted at the time that they became parents. Thus, if a man becomes insane, the children begotten afterwards might have a slight tendency to insanity, while the children begotten previously might be free from such a tendency. So, also, a man may live exclusively upon meat, and thus acquire a strong appetite for it, and his children may consequently be born with a stronger love for meat than if the parent had fed exclusively upon vegetables. This is merely combining the well-known doctrine, that " like produces like," with another, which is equally well established, that external circumstances change and modify organization. I admit that important impressions may be made upon the embryo through the nervous system of the parent, producing deformities and idiosyncrasies which may be perpetuated and constitute a new species ; but this is not an exception to the rule, but rather a confirmation of the general principle, that external impressions are, under Providence, the sole creators of new developments and new forms of organization.

Can Grimes, then, be said to have anticipated evolution by natural selection? I do not think so, at least if we mean "evolution by natural selection" as Darwin formulated it. Grimes postulated that offspring were essentially like their parents (humans being an exception that required some special hereditary hypotheses) and that it was the action of external forces that molded organisms. When the environment changed, most individuals did not have enough plasticity to withstand the new conditions, but some did and they passed down their acquired traits to the next generation.

Darwin, by contrast, noted the ways in which organisms naturally varied due to heredity, and the variations could be selected for to change animals over time. The traits acquired during life were not passed down to offspring, and the question of the source of variation is the major difference between the notions of Grimes and Darwin.

Yet Grimes hit on a number of important theoretical points (i.e. evolution does not have an end-direction, what is an "improvement" can only be determined in context of survival in an environment, the future course of evolution is partially determined by past evolutionary history, etc.), and I wonder why I had never heard of him before now. It may have to do with the politics of science. He worked on phrenology, mesmerism, etherology, and phreno-philosophy, concepts that were popular but being pushed out towards the edge of scientific research. Some of the notions he brought up in his work, like rodents being evolved from birds and real "sea monkeys," surely made him few friends.

Perhaps some of these strange views caused some of his colleagues to ignore the theoretical underpinnings of some of this work; why should they have listened to someone who believed that humans emerged, walking upright, from the sea? Furthermore, his book seems to be full of philosophical contradictions. At some points he exalted "lower" animals for having more "perfected" organs than we do, yet at other times he asserted our clear superiority over all life. Grimes appeared to be struggling with the lack of direction seen in nature and our position as the "lords of creation," and this strain is apparent in his considerations of how evolution proceeded.

It has sometimes been said that if Darwin had not formulated the idea of evolution by natural selection, someone else would have. The fact that A.R. Wallace did so confirms this notion, and because we are able to understand nature in a meaningful way it is not unreasonable to think that even if Wallace had not, someone would eventually have figured things out. Yet I have to wonder how the history of scientific inquiry would have been different if the evolutionary hypotheses of Grimes or even Richard Owen had been accepted as correct evolutionary mechanisms. Would we have celebrated the 200th anniversary of Owen's birth in 2004? Would our understanding of evolution today been comparatively stunted, or even advanced? It is impossible to know, but it is important to remember that evolutionary theory did not begin and end with Darwin. During the coming year, I hope we can keep that in perspective.