1. In my opinion I would have to say that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had a
positive influence over Darwin mainly because they both agreed on the
basis that life gradually changed over time and continued to change,
living things continued to increase their chances of survival through adaptation, and they both believed that life came from simpler
organisms thus turning to complex organisms.
2. In 1801 Lamarck began to publish his detail on the evolutionary
theories. He is known for his Theory of Inheritance of Acquired
Characteristics which practically says that living things adapt to their
environment thus passing it down to their future generations.
(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/lamarck.html)
3. The bullet point "In order for traits to evolve and change, they
MUST be heritable" affects Lamarck's work because in his work he uses
examples such as elephants previously having short trunks, but after
time they adapted to have have longer trunks and of course that was
through a long process of generations and generations of adaptation.
4. Darwin could have developed his ideas without Lamarck just because
there were plenty of other people who had the same idea or were on the
same path.
5. The attitude of the church toward Darwin's book On the Origin of Species actually angered the church and the old Natural theologians responded very negatively toward it.
I believe Lamarck had a positive influence over Darwin as well because not even Darwin's grandfather attempted to explain the evolutionary process but Lamarck did. Great first post!
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that Lamarck did influence Darwin. But the thing is that Lamarck only had an idea or a thought and other people were studying the same thing so Darwin was bound to up with his theory. Thomas Malthus had better concept of the evolution to me he seems like a bigger influence then Lamarck.
ReplyDeletePatrick you make a good argument, Lamarck's theory even though laughed at by others was the on the path and made a good base for Darwin.Lamarck noted evolution earlier than others by noting the growth of giraffe necks.
ReplyDeleteA couple of cautions in your opening paragraph. The terms "better" and "simple" vs. "complex" are to be avoided as a general rule when discussing evolutionary theory. Organisms don't adapt to become "better". They adapt because they can through evolutionary processes. There is no goal to "improve... just to survive and reproduce. Likewise, although there is a trend toward organisms increasing in complexity over time, this is also not a goal or purpose of the evolutionary process. It is an incidental result of the process. Sometimes simpler (the octopus eye) is more efficient with less problems than a more complex structure (the human eye with it's notorious blind spot).
ReplyDeleteYou've given the basics on Lamarck's work, but can you explain how Lamarck's theory differed from Darwin's? Both involved heritable adaptations. Why was Lamarck's ideas wrong but Darwin's were correct?
Correct, the bullet point for heritable traits is directly applied to Lamarck, though the point about changing environments would apply as well.
I tend to agree that no person is so important to the work of another that they could be indispensable to them. This might be the case with Lyell and Malthus, but there were other scientists who were working on evolutionary concepts other than Lamarck.
The question in the quidelines with regard to the church asks how the church influenced Darwin's decision to publish. Darwin delayed more than 20 years to publish his work, only doing so after Wallace appeared to be ready to publish without him. Why did he wait? What were Darwin's concerns? How did the church come into play?
I like how you cited the example of the elephant trunks because it created a visual for your concept that you were discussing. This helped make it easier to understand what you were talking about. I think you could have elaborated more on Lamarck's work to give us a fuller understanding of his contribution to Darwin's theories.
ReplyDeletePatrick,
ReplyDeleteI can clearly see why you think Lamarack was the most influential scientist on Darwin's Natural Selection theory but wouldn't you agree that it was Lyell who influenced not only Darwin and Lamarack but the rest of the scientific community with his concept of "deep time"? Without that concept, scientists wouldn't have looked at a larger spectrum of history before/whilst creating theories.