Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The neo-Lamarckian conflict with Darwinism has become more and more acute in recent times, and the neo-Lamarckians have sometimes passed from contrasting rival interpretations to excluding the Darwinian factor altogether. As the particular champion of the neo-Lamarckian view, we must name Th. Eimer, the recently deceased Tübingen zoologist.
These neo-Lamarckian views give us a picture of the evolution of the world that is much more convincing than the strictly Darwinian one.
For it is quite conceivable that the same effort to turn the same circumstances to good account might have the same result, especially if the problem put by the circumstances is such as to admit of only one solution. But the question remains, whether the term "effort" must not then be taken in a deeper sense, a sense even more psychological than any neo-Lamarckian supposes.
Kassowitz is equally keen and convinced in his opposition to natural selection, and in his comprehensive “Allgemeine Biologic” he attacks orthodox Darwinism from the neo-Lamarckian standpoint. The whole of the first volume is almost chapter for chapter a critical analysis, and the polemical element rather outweighs his positive personal contribution.
The various theories of organic evolution, whether Lamarckian, neo-Lamarckian, or Darwinian, are based upon the assumption that animals and plants have a tendency to perpetuate by transmission to offspring a variation which has proven useful as an aid to the particular species in its struggle for existence.
In any family, devoted for generations to literary or artistic pursuits, the children show, as a rule, an aptitude for such pursuits not manifested by those of other families. According to the Neo-Lamarckian view, this inherited aptitude is to a certain extent the result of the constant exercise of these faculties through a series of generations.
Whether biologists, however, range themselves in the Neo-Darwinian or in the Neo-Lamarckian camp, the value of the principle of natural selection is acknowledged by all, and nobody now asserts the independent creation and permanence of species. The Complete Works of Darwin, published by D. Appleton and Company. The Works of Alfred Russel Wallace. Francis Darwin's "Life of Charles Darwin."
An animal having an organ highly developed is far less likely to pair with one having a lower development of the same organ. The Neo-Lamarckian theory supplies thus what is lacking in the Neo-Darwinian. In lower forms, like hydra, of simple structure and comparatively few possibilities of variation, natural selection is dominant.
We have since come to think that its industry is less continuous: that the clock stops for a long time, and then is suddenly 'put on' by a mysterious finger. But never mind that just at present. I call your special attention to Lamarck, because later on there were Neo-Lamarckians as well as Neo-Darwinians. I was a Neo-Lamarckian.
On the whole Osborne's verdict would seem just: The Neo-Lamarckian theory fails to explain heredity, Weismann's theory does not explain evolution. But, if the effects of use and disuse are transmitted, correlation of variation is to be expected. Muscle, nerve, and ganglion all vary in correlation because they are all used together and in like degree.
Word Of The Day