Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and His Influences on Charles Darwin
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and His Influences on Charles Darwin
February 04, 2019
work cited provided at end
1. There were many scientists who influenced Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution through natural selection; such as Thomas Malthus, who theorized the concept of constant competition, Charles Lyell, who came up with geological uniformitarianism, George Cuvier, who believed in catastrophism, and Alfred Russel Wallace, who ended up at the same conclusion as Charles Darwin. But one of these scientists, who had the greatest effect on Charles Darwin, was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
2. Lamarck's Contributions to the Scientific Community
His ideas revolved around the concept that the external environment changed, as a direct result, the animals and inhabitants of that area would change their activity pattern to accommodate these new conditions. Jean-Baptiste believed that there was a "use it or lose it" rule in nature, if an organism did or did not use a body part, it would either become greater or useless. Then it would be passed on to the next generation.
An example:
"If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, for example, a "nervous fluid" would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations. Meanwhile organs that organisms stopped using would shrink"(evolution.berkley).
Here is a diagram to help visualize this example:
provided by: http://ihc2015.info/skin/lamarckism-vs-darwinism.akp
3. Concepts of Evolution Influenced and Affected by Lamarck and Relation to Darwin
- "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to an environment will be different": Jean-Baptiste affected this concept; His entire ideology of the matter was centered in the idea that environmental changes trigger changes within animals. Although his physical ideas of how this change in animals occurred were wrong- his ideas on why changes happened (environmental stresses) was accurate. Darwin definitely was influenced by Jean- Baptiste's idea that one's environment and the stresses that occur with change, directly affect the changes in a species over time and through several generations.
- "In order for traits to evolve and change, they MUST be heritable": This concept is one that falsified Jean-Baptiste's work. Charles Darwin knew that these traits had to be genetic (although there was a lack of understanding of genes during this time) and not simply changes made to the physical animal as Lamarck proposed. This idea disproved a large part of Lamarck's idea that new traits can be passed on without genetic change. Charles's theory of natural selection proved the possibility that animals who have the genetic variation that is favored by the environment are the ones who survive to reproduce-passing down their favorable traits. Lamarck's idea was a good base to the concept but lacked the scientific evidence and plausibility that Darwin's provided.
- "In order for natural selection to occur, reproduction MUST occur": Darwin and Lamarck's post agreed on this concept. Lamarck lacked the proper genetic explanation but was clear on the fact that the favored traits were passed on to offspring. Darwin provided the explanation that in order for these traits to be passed down, was a matter of natural selection, rather than physical adaptation. Lamarck's idea definitely provided a basis for Darwin to explore heredity and how traits are actually passed down to offspring.
4. Could Darwin Have Developed His Ideas Without Influences of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?
I believe that Darwin would have been able to develop his ideas without Lamarck; however, it would have taken him much longer to investigate the concept of traits that were favored in certain environments and the concept of passing these traits onto offspring. Darwin was a very bright scientist who had enough creative will and curiosity to eventually explore these ideas, but Lamarck's ideas provided a basis that he could draw ideas from. Without Lamarck, the whole process would have been much more strenuous and maybe even less accepted because the concept would have been considered even more radical. Luckily for Darwin, he was able to be influenced and inspired by the scientific work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, which led to his theory of evolution and natural selection.
5. The Church & Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin waited a long twenty-three years to publish his book "The Origin of Species". This was largely due to the religious implications that would follow this controversial theory. His theory of natural selection and evolution directly opposed The Genesis, which was widely accepted by most of Europe. The Genesis proposed that God made all living things in a matter of six days; whereas Charles Darwin's theory proposed that everything alive today has been evolving for millions of years. During this time period, being on the "bad side" of the church was not something to be taken lightly, he knew that their disapproval could ruin his career. For this reason he collected mounts of evidence and perfected his ideas before gathering up the courage to finally release his book and controversial ideas.
WORKS CITED
Reproductive Isolation, evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09.
picture link:
http://ihc2015.info/skin/lamarckism-vs-darwinism.akp
Your post was very informative, which made it easy to understand why Lamarck's work had a positive influence on Darwin. I think since Lamarck was a zoologist, and studied how animals change in their environments, it helped Darwins theory of natural selection. Their ideas compliment each other very well.
ReplyDeleteNice layout and good use of images.
ReplyDeleteGood information in your opening summary, but some clarification. The "use it or lose it" ideas (called "Use/Disuse") is only one part of Lamarck's overarching theory of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics. Use/Disuse only explains how traits (like the horse's extra toes) disappear. It doesn't explain how traits (like the giraffe's neck) changes.
Excellent choice of bullet points and good explanation. All three are precisely what I intended you to pull from this section.
For your next section, I feel you are bending to give credit to Lamarck. Does evidence justify this? Lamarck should be credited as the first to propose an actual mechanism for evolution. This was a huge step forward, regardless of its inaccuracies, but there were many others discussing and debating evolution during Darwin's time. Not only that, but Darwin had Lyell and Malthus and eventually Wallace (among many others) giving him real-time feedback and foundational information. By the time Darwin was in University, studying naturalism, Lamarck was a well-debunked historical part of his science books. Lamarck was important but not necessarily indispensable.
In the last section, you are describing the state of the general public, but that wasn't his intended audience. Scientific papers were presented to the scientific community and rarely made waves in public, and scientists were more open to the idea of organismal evolution (though Darwin was careful not to discuss human evolution until his second book, though the implications were clear). But that doesn't mean the church wasn't paying attention and it certainly doesn't mean the church couldn't impact Darwin's life if they chose, either personally or professionally, by attacking his place in his community or his status as a scientist (which you do reference). And was he only worried about himself or was he also worried about how his family might be impacted by publishing? Remember that his wife was very devout. How might she have been impacted if the church responded negatively to Darwin? Remember that scientists don't work in a vacuum. They can be influenced not just by academics but also by social, cultural and personal issues.