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.

theory

inheritance

Property received from ancestors

giraffe · adaptation · phenotype · modification · inheritability · characteristics · progressivism · variation · generations · environmental influence

naturalist

zoology

Study of fauna

classification · specimens · museum · shells · mollusks · annelids · arachnids · crustaceans · collections · fieldwork

person

Jean-Baptiste

French masculine compound name

zoologist · botanist · biologist · philosopher · theorist · professor · pioneer · army officer · Picardy · poverty

historical

Enlightenment

Era prioritizing reason over dogma

superseded · discredited · rehabilitated · precursor · vitalism · teleology

Opposites
evolutionary mechanism

LamarckDarwin

British naturalist, species theorist

Charles Darwin · natural selection · Darwinism · random mutation · Darwinian evolution

scientific legacy

LamarckDarwin

British naturalist, species theorist

Mendel · Watson and Crick

inheritance philosophy

Lamarckgenetic determinism

Heredity alone shapes traits

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