Epigenetics, Darwin, and Lamarck

Lifestyle in the sperm

M ore than 200 years ago, JeanBaptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) proposed a theory for the major question in biology: How do organisms change over time to adapt to their environment and create new species? Lamarck reasoned that if an organism changes to better adapt to its environment, these changes would be passed on to its offspring, and this would explain changes over generations. He was eventuall...

Bacterial Evolution: Random or Selective?

The publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859 constitutes a fundamental milestone in the history of science. In this book, Darwin builds up his theory of evolution based on the objective statements that living organisms change, that changes are transmitted to the progeny and that reproduction of organisms frequently gives rise to progenies that are too numerous to permit th...

Darwin’s theory is the mixture of Malthus’s theory and Lyell’s theory and Darwin use wrong Lamarck’s theory as well as believe as a mechanism of evolution

Darwin’s theory of natural selection is a mixture of Lyell’s theory and Malthus’s theory and Darwin used wrong Lamarck’s theory, theme of sociologist Herbert Spencer ‘survival of the fittest’ plus believes as the mechanism of evolution. Evidences are provided form his paper 1858, ‘Origin of Species’ and ‘Descent of Man’ his autobiography and different text books. Diverse literatures showed that...

The future of selection: individuality, the twin legacies of Lamarck & Darwin.

Oltre il mito: Lamarck e le scienze naturali del suo tempo

PIETRO CORSI, Oltre il mito: Lamarck e le scienze naturali del suo tempo, Bologna, II Mulino, 1983, 8vo, pp. 432, L.30,000 (paperback). While Charles Darwin still awaits a satisfactory scientific biography, four studies have appeared recently which illuminate the position of Lamarck in the history of science. While two of them, by R. Burckhardt and L. Jordanova, come from the Anglo-Saxon world,...