Degeneration des 'sauvages' et critique du lamarckisme au Royaume–Uni: la 'Natural history of society in the barbarous and civilized state' (1840) de William Cooke Taylor

Focusing on William Cooke Taylor’s Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized State (London 1840), this paper examines and contextualises Taylor’s critique of Lamarckian transformism. Viewing Lamarckism as an extension of Enlightenment progressivist conceptions of history, tracing back the origin of civilization to an original savage state, Taylor undertakes to demonstrate the degeneracy of contemporary extra–European savages from primitive more advanced social conditions. Far from illustrating the natural and primary state of man, savage societies are conceived as the final result of regressive processes, an explanatory option enabling Taylor to refute both Enlightenment theories of progress and Lamarckism.