Lamarck argued, as part of his theory of heredity, that a blacksmith's sons inherit the strong muscles he acquires from his work.[1]
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism,[2] is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance. The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity.
Introductory textbooks contrast Lamarckism with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse, as Lamarck had done, and his own concept of pangenesis similarly implied soft inheritance.[2][3]
Many researchers from the 1860s onwards attempted to find evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, but these have all been explained away,[4][5] either by other mechanisms such as genetic contamination or as fraud. August Weismann's experiment, considered definitive in its time, is now considered to have failed to disprove Lamarckism, as it did not address use and disuse. Later, Mendelian genetics supplanted the notion of inheritance of acquired traits, eventually leading to the development of the modern synthesis, and the general abandonment of Lamarckism in biology. Despite this, interest in Lamarckism has continued.
Since c. 2000 new experimental results in the fields of epigenetics, genetics, and somatic hypermutation proved the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of traits acquired by the previous generation. These proved a limited validity of Lamarckism. The inheritance of the hologenome, consisting of the genomes of all an organism's symbiotic microbes as well as its own genome, is also somewhat Lamarckian in effect, though entirely Darwinian in its mechanisms.
^Cite error: The named reference Lamarck1830 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ abCite error: The named reference Ghiselin1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Gould2002p177 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Bowler 2003 245–246 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Medawar 1985 168 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics...
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evolution, Lamarckism, and vitalism. Other palaeontologists and field naturalists continued to hold beliefs combining orthogenesis and Lamarckism until the...
offspring would be a form of epigenetic inheritance.[citation needed] Lamarckism, as this body of thought became known, was the standard explanation for...
evolution, Lamarckism, and vitalism. Other palaeontologists and field naturalists continued to hold beliefs combining orthogenesis and Lamarckism until the...
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Ehrharta erecta is a species of grass commonly known as panic veldtgrass. The species is native to Southern Africa and Yemen. It is a documented invasive...
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classification for animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal...
in adults caused by use or disuse. This process was later called Lamarckism. Lamarck thought there was an inherent progressive tendency driving organisms...
on to the offspring. Charles Darwin first had significant contact with Lamarckism during his time at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in the late...
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history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species...
a Soviet agronomist and pseudoscientist. He was a strong proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific...
Lamarck, a gradualist and colleague of Cuvier, saw the fossils of different life forms as evidence of the mutable character of species. While Lamarck...
their use or disuse in parents. (The latter process was later called Lamarckism.) These ideas were condemned by established naturalists as speculation...
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Иван Петрович Павлов, IPA: [ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf] ; 26 September [O.S. 14 September] 1849 – 27 February 1936) was...
this species for Kew Gardens in 1774. French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck described it as Mesembryanthemum echinatum in 1786, from material in France...
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