Why Lamarck did not discover the principle of natural selection
- Book ID
- 104634896
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1982
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 1008 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5010
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In commenting on the work of Georges Buffon, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, and Charles Darwin, the historian J. S. Wilkie suggested that one of these scientists could be "observed in the act of not discovering the principle of natural selection. ''1 Although it was actually Buffon who came under the author's sleuthful gaze in this particular instance, his essay leaves no doubt that Lamarck too could have been caught in the act. Indeed he was, and has been since by other historians, though perhaps not so red-handedly. These examples illustrate the point: Lamarck's problem was not limited to a lack of evidence in support of the idea of organic change. He was also unable to provide a satisfactory mechanism to account for the facts of adaptation... Natural selection, the key to explaining adaptation that was discovered by Darwin and Wallace, never occurred to Lamarck. 2 Organic evolution implies that animate nature is in a constant state of change, but Lamarck was unwilling to push his concept to its logical extreme, a Instead of looking for such a factor [adaptation], I_amarck talked vaguely of "the cause which tends to the complication of organization," thus introducing an idea inconsistent with his materialistic outlook. 4
One more instance in which Lamarck made the wrong guess! s