Lamarck
Lamarck refers to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, an eighteenth-century French naturalist who proposed that organisms pass acquired traits to offspring—a giraffe stretching its neck would produce longer-necked young.
Though this mechanism proved wrong, Lamarck pioneered evolutionary thinking before Darwin.
Lamarckian and Lamarckism describe this inheritance theory or similar ideas: Lamarckian evolution, neo-Lamarckism.
Property received from ancestors
- acquiredCame to possess
- traitsDistinguishing personal features
- transmutationComplete change of form
- giraffeTallest land animal
adaptation · phenotype · modification · inheritability · characteristics · progressivism · variation · generations
Study of fauna
- botanyScience of flora
- invertebratesAnimals without vertebral columns
- taxonomyScience of categorical arrangement
- classificationSystematic grouping by traits
specimens · museum · shells · mollusks · annelids · arachnids · crustaceans · collections
French masculine compound name
- chevalierFrench noble warrior
- FrenchOf or from Paris's nation
- naturalistStudent of nature
- zoologistOne who studies animals
botanist · biologist · philosopher · theorist · professor · pioneer · army officer · Picardy
Era prioritizing reason over dogma
- eighteenth-centuryRelating to the 1700s
- French RevolutionLate-1700s republican upheaval
- natural philosophyHistorical term for science
- supersededReplaced by something newer
discredited · rehabilitated · precursor · vitalism · teleology
inheritance
Property received from ancestors
- acquiredCame to possess
- traitsDistinguishing personal features
- transmutationComplete change of form
giraffe · adaptation · phenotype · modification · inheritability · characteristics · progressivism · variation · generations · environmental influence
zoology
Study of fauna
- botanyScience of flora
- invertebratesAnimals without vertebral columns
- taxonomyScience of categorical arrangement
classification · specimens · museum · shells · mollusks · annelids · arachnids · crustaceans · collections · fieldwork
Jean-Baptiste
French masculine compound name
- chevalierFrench noble warrior
- FrenchOf or from Paris's nation
- naturalistStudent of nature
zoologist · botanist · biologist · philosopher · theorist · professor · pioneer · army officer · Picardy · poverty
Enlightenment
Era prioritizing reason over dogma
- eighteenth-centuryRelating to the 1700s
- French RevolutionLate-1700s republican upheaval
- natural philosophyHistorical term for science
superseded · discredited · rehabilitated · precursor · vitalism · teleology
LamarckDarwin
British naturalist, species theorist
Charles Darwin · natural selection · Darwinism · random mutation · Darwinian evolution