L’évolution théorique d’un évolutionniste : Lucien Cuénot

Resumen

The theoretical path of an evolutionist: Lucien Cuenot

This paper portrays the theoretical path followed by Lucien Cuénot, from the earlier 1890s to the years after the Second World War, concerning the question of evolutionary mechanisms. Once he precociously adopted Tranformism, he became one of the first French Neodarwinists in his rejection of the transmission of acquired characters. Adherent to Weismann’s ideas on the continuity of germinative plasma, Cuénot was concern all his life with the experiments supposed to prove Neolamarkism, current he contributed to bury once and for all. Since 1910, he seize the immense scope of Hugo de Vries’ work in the genetic field. Experimenting himself with mice, he validated Mendel’s laws for the Animal Kingdom and he did not hesitated to advance the theoretical consequences for Evolutionism. As the leading representative of the transformist school in France, he was involved with understanding the complex phenomenon of adaptation. Objector to the explanation provided by natural selection, he is the author of the concept of ‘preadaptation’, which he developed through all his life, and so he will relate to the synthetic theory of evolution. From the decade of 1920, distressed with the problems posed by coadaptation and orthogenesis, Cuénot will adhere to an extrascientific finalism. Changing drastically his views about nature, he missed the scientific revolution of the 1940s. However, his vast production and his exceptional theoretical lucidity during nearly fifty years, confer him a place in the history of Evolutionism. He notably remark the pertinence of most of his theorical choices within the framework of a selection of ideas founded in the experimental best, without considering the numerous social pressures of his time.

Key words: Lucien Cuénot, Evolutionism in France, Neolamarkism, adaptation, preadaptation, coadaptation, orthogenesis, evolutionary experimentation.