Zoological philosophy /

Abstract

This at least is the story told by all Lamarck's biographers. I venture nevertheless to suggest that it can hardly be accepted in the unquestioning way usually followed. The story is founded upon Cuvier's Eloge de M. de Lamarck, and that again is doubtless b 1 J am here alluding to the classification presented in the main work. This classification was greatly improved in the "' Additions '' to Part I., as I shall show later; and many of these animals were then referred by Lamarck to collateral branches, off the main line of development leading to man. ne ACQUIRED CHARACTERS xiii'we are able to witness the actual process. Hence, selection is proved to be a vera causa. Like use-inheritance it is competent theoretically to account for a great part of the evolutionary process ; unlike use-inheritance it is not invented for the occasion, but is a process which may actually be observed to take place. \ Lamarck committed the error, eminently excusable in the age in which he lived, of assuming that when he has formed a theory which will fit the facts, and when he can think of no other theory which will also fit the facts, then that theory must be true. I shall adduce an even more xlviii animals, the liver-fluke, a cestode, and a triclad, which he confused together, on account of a superficial resemblance.Lamarck's first class is that of infusorians, with its two orders of naked and appendiculate infusorians.The former mainly correspond to our Protozoa: the latter includesCercaria, now known to be a larval form of trematodes.Lamarck also regarded the human spermatozoon as an lviii H. E.

The EDGE hypothesis: Epigenetically directed genetic errors in repeat-containing proteins (RCPs) involved in evolution, neuroendocrine signaling, and cancer

“…However, most other practitioners of the modern synthesis minimized nonMendelian ideas such as the role of the environment or the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The latter idea was first popularized in 1809 by Jean Baptiste Lamarck [6]. The classic Lamarckian example (although he did not actually use it himself) is that a giraffe has a long neck because successive generations have stretched their necks to eat the leaves on the tops of the trees.…”

“Synergistic selection”: A Darwinian frame for the evolution of complexity

“…Perhaps the earliest "modern" theorist to advance the idea of an inherent evolutionary trend toward complexity was the eighteenth and early nineteenth century naturalist Lamarck (1914Lamarck ( / 1809, although the basic idea can be traced back at least to Aristotle's concept of "entelechy" 2 . A half century later, the renowned English polymath Spencer (1892/1852) elevated the idea of progress into an energy-centered "universal law of evolution" that spanned physics, biology, psychology, sociology and ethics 3 .…”

An evolutionary idea of evolution: a Peircean interpretation of hybrid-agent organisazation model

“…Peirce's idea of evolution [8] has some characteristics that are similar to those ascribed to the idea of evolution by the main thinkers in the 19 th century, that is, namely by Darwin and Lamarck [2], [3]. Although Peirce's conception of evolution changed in time, he always conceived it as involving growth, consistent and continuous.…”