Talk:Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

It's my first attempt at making a new article, as opposed to editing one. I'm not sure if I remembered everything that needed to be included. Was there anything I've missed? Daecon 03:58, 3 July 2008 (EDT)

May I make a(nother) suggestion? Move to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. -- *Gen. S.T. Shrink*  Get to the bunker  04:04, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * That's a good idea. I imagine it should be easy enough to figure out how to make the changes. Daecon 04:20, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Or at least it would be if I can find the darn relocate button.
 * Ummm...to the right of fossil record. -- *Gen. S.T. Shrink*  Get to the bunker  04:29, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * All I have are edit on the left and ignore on the right. Daecon 04:35, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * OH, Its because you're a new editor. Yeah, trent did this thing that kinda tightened up on the editing for IP's and new accounts. Want me to relocate it? -- *Gen. S.T. Shrink*  Get to the bunker  04:37, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Ah! That explains it. Yes please, if it's not too much trouble. :-) Daecon 04:40, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Garsh no. -- *Gen. S.T. Shrink*  Get to the bunker  04:41, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
 * You done good, "Daecon" person editor-thing. We appreciate your efforts!  ħ uman  02:54, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

Lamarckism
Re: Recent edit - Wouldn't "Lamarckianism" be like saying "Darwinianism"? Daecon 02:13, 6 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I suppose, yes. Except it's an old, discredited theory... and Lamarckian is an adjective used to describe a hypothesis, so Larmarkianism would mean an adherence to that hypothesis?  ħ uman  02:43, 6 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I kinda cleaned it up.  ħ uman  02:50, 6 July 2008 (EDT)
 * There is a lot more that could be said about Lamarck. If I remember, apart from the acquired characteristics stuff, he had some sort of idea of driving force behind evolution which made it happen. In this he was ahead of Darwin at the time, as Darwin had no knowledge of genetics and mutations and so didn't really have a "driver" for what he saw actually happening.  As a consequence later editions of Origin of Species are claimed to incorporate more ideas from Lamarck as Darwin tried to respond to his critics. But it's been a while since I've been well up on this and I'm reluctant to start adding it to the article at this point.  (Though it does show how "Darwinism" is not just based on what Darwin thought but has evolved as a theory.) --Bobbing up 03:03, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

The "tailless mouse" thing is a strawman that Lamarck himself did not support.
Lamarck thought that it was adaptive "training" effects, not purely damaging events, that were passed on. That makes Lamarckism perfectly reconcileable with Darwinism through variability selection and risk reduction selection. Read "Bacteria evolved way to safeguard crucial genetic material" and about Joseph Cairns 1988 experiment. Consider that red blood cells survive for weeks without DNA, the conflict between Motoo Kimuran neutralism argument about lethal mutation rate and the existence of complexity, and why life uses such a fragile genetic material as DNA and expends so much energy protecting and repairing it when stabler alternatives (XNA 1-5) are proven to exist.

109.58.54.248 (talk) 15:56, 7 September 2012 (UTC)Martin J Sallberg


 * I agree that it is pretty ahistorical to use the phrase "really shoddy thinking". You might as well attack Aristotle.  The tail-chopping thing is an allusion to the actual experiment of August Weismann, whether intentional or not.  - Jsh (talk) 15:00, 3 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit late to this party but red blood cells aren't technically alive as they don't perform any cellular functions such as protein synthesis. CorruptUser (talk) 05:47, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting paper
According to Lamarck, animals respond to new needs required by the novel circumstances of a changing environment by adaptive efforts. These efforts lead to changing habits and functions and, over time, they translate into new forms and structures. The resulting enforced use and disuse are inherited. By default, the existence of vestigial organs is proof that function created form. In other words, an organism reacts, as a whole, to the needs imposed upon it by its environment. The organism subsequently transmits the changes acquired during its lifetime to the next generation. The “lowest” animal forms react by simple irritability, whereas “higher” ones respond instinctively, and the “highest” animals respond with intelligent actions. This idea is far from the much ridiculed caricature of the giraffe lengthening its own neck, but, unfortunately, today this caricature is typically all that our students know about Lamarck.

Francis Dov. (2006). The actuality of Lamarck: towards the bicentenary of his Philosophie Zoologique. Integrative Zoology. pp. 48-52. Evolutionist (talk) 02:17, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I read somewhere
... that #culture# (in its broadest sense) develops in a Lamarckian manner.

One can see with a herd species that 'one animal' having a suitable (flexible/long) neck learns to eat tree leaves (as well as grass) and 'others of the herd which can' do so - and those of their offspring which have the relevant genes remaining in the particular group, and a reinforcement process involving both genetic and learnt aspects leads to 'longer necked leaf eaters' and 'shorter necked grass eaters' becoming two distinct species. (This is an obvious simplification, using Lamarck's original example.) 86.191.125.131 (talk) 10:57, 13 February 2017 (UTC)