Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin both had different opinions about how life on earth evolved. Although, Lamarck and Darwin ideals regarding life on earth differ they also shared similarities. For instance, both Lamarck and Darwin both recognized that life had changed over time, in addition Lamarck also agreed life evolved from organisms. Lamarck believed that living things changed to adapt to their surroundings. for example, Lamarck believed that the giraffe stretched its neck to reach high for eating and subsequently the changes are passed on to giraffes’ offspring. Several years after Lamarck’s Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics was published Darwin book Origin of Species dealing with natural selection was published.
Darwin’s book pointed to the inconsistency of species from common ancestors. Darwin was influenced by Lamarck and spent many years considering Lamarck’s theory that over time living things change to adapt to their environment.
If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different. Organisms with those new adaptive traits will have greater reproductive success than others and those new beneficial traits will spread, producing a change in the population. This is the process of natural selection, essentially the process of the natural environment selecting the organisms that will be most successful.
Darwin it is believed that Darwin was interested in life and how life evolve. I believe because of his contemporizes work it encouraged Darwin to set out on a journey to understand the process of natural selection.
No doubt Darwin was closed mouth about his theory on evolution and the process of life due to the overwhelming influence the churches had on society at that time. Darwin’s life would have been at risk if the churches felt that Darwin was undermining the bible.
You have a lot of good detail and information in your opening paragraph. Let me offer a little clarification and expansion upon Lamarck's work and it's relationship with Darwin's:
ReplyDeleteLamarck must be acknowledged as the first naturalist to propose an actual mechanism regarding the process of evolution. Even though the mechanism turned out to be wrong, this is a very big deal. Lamarck also recognized the importance of the environment on shaping organisms and he also understood that the traits must be heritable and passed on through reproduction in order for evolutionary changes to spread. So these are important to explain. The key difference between Darwin's and Lamarck's theories is when the evolutionary process occurs. Lamarck argued that individuals evolve and pass those changes onto their offspring. Darwin understood that this process wouldn't work. He argued instead that natural selection acted on existing natural variation in a population, selecting those variants that competed more successfully in a given environment and produced more offspring as a result. I.e., Darwin argued that "Individuals don't evolve. Populations do."
"Darwin’s book pointed to the inconsistency of species from common ancestors."
What do you mean by that statement? How are species "inconsistent"?
I agree with your choice of bullet point but there are at least two others that can be directly attributed to Lamarck. He recognized the importance of both heritability and reproduction in the evolutionary process. You could also highlight the point of "Individuals don't evolve. Populations do.", though Lamarck and Darwin were on opposite sides of this point, producing a negative influence of sorts.
"Darwin it is believed that Darwin was interested in life and how life evolve."
I don't understand this statement. Can you explain?
That third section asked you to consider if Darwin could have developed his theory of evolution by natural selection without your chosen individual, namely Lamarck. I don't see where you address this. Lamarck should certainly 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 to mention by the time Darwin was in school, Lamarck's theory was old news and falsified. Lamarck was important but not necessarily indispensable.
"Darwin’s life would have been at risk if the churches felt that Darwin was undermining the bible."
I agree that the church had the power to make life more difficult for Darwin and his family, but this was the Church of England, not the Catholic Church who caused so much trouble for Galileo, and they weren't putting anyone to death for ideas that went against the church. But Darwin delayed publishing for more than 20 years. The question is, why? And how did the influence of the church play a role in this delay? What were Darwin's concerns? Darwin was fully aware that the concept of evolution would be controversial. The uproar such a publication would produce could hurt his standing in the community, personally and professionally. 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? Recognize that scientists don't work in a vacuum. They can be influenced not just by academics but also by social, cultural and personal issues.