Louis Vialleton

Louis Marius Vialleton (December 22, 1859 - December 18, 1929) was a French zoologist and writer, best known for his advocation of non-Darwinian evolution.

Career

Vialleton was born in Vienne, Isère. He was the first professor of histology in the faculty of medicine at the University of Montpellier.^[1] Vialleton rejected any form of continuous evolution and favoured saltationism.^[2]

Vialleton attempted to refute gradual transformism from a morphological perspective in his work Morphologie générale Membres et ceintures des vertébrés tétrapodes: Critique morphotogique du transformisme (1924).^[3] Zoologist Étienne Rabaud responded with a critical article.^[3][4]

He contributed the chapter Morphologie et transformisme to the book Le Transformisme (1927). Vialleton's views were often misrepresented by creationists as anti-evolutionary. His writings were influential to creationists such as Douglas Dewar.^[5] However, he did not reject evolution.^[6] He was also incorrectly described as a critic of evolution by A. Morley Davies.^[7]

Vialleton was a vitalist.^[1][8]

Publications

• Un monstre double humain du genre Ectopage (1892)
• Un Problème de l'Évolution: La Théorie de la Récapitulation des Formes Ancestrales au Cours du Développement Embryonnaire (Loi Biogénétique Fondamentale de Haeckel) (1908)^[9]
• Éléments de Morphologie des Vertébrés Anatomie et Embryologie Comparées, Paléontologie et Classification (1911)^[10]
• Membres et ceintures des Vertébrés Tétrapodes: Critique morphologique du transformisme (1924)
• Morphologie générale Membres et ceintures des vertébrés tétrapodes: Critique morphotogique du transformisme (1924)^[11][12]
• Le Transformisme (1927) [with Élie Gagnebin, Lucien Cuénot, William Robin Thompson, Roland Dalbiez]
• L'origine Des Etres Vivants, L'illusion Transformiste (1929)

See also

• The eclipse of Darwinism