Inheritance of acquired characteristics

The inheritance of acquired characteristics is a hypothesis that physiological changes acquired over the life of an organism (such as the enlargement of a muscle through repeated use) may be transmitted to offspring. It is also commonly referred to as the theory of adaptation equated with the evolutionary theory of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) known as Lamarckism.

The idea was proposed in ancient times by Hippocrates and Aristotle, and was commonly accepted near to Lamarck's time. Erasmus Darwin had described the inheritance of acquired characters in his Zoonomia, 1794. According to historian of science Conway Zirkle:

Lamarck was neither the first nor the most distinguished biologist to believe in the inheritance of acquired characters. He merely endorsed a belief which had been generally accepted for at least 2,200 years before his time and used it to explain how evolution could have taken place. The inheritance of acquired characters had been accepted previously by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen (?), Roger Bacon, Jerome Cardan, Levinus Lemnius, John Ray, Michael Adanson, Jo. Fried. Blumenbach and Erasmus Darwin among others.

Lamarck published his theory in 1809, the year Charles Darwin was born. He noticed several lines of descent by comparing current species with fossil forms. He noticed that the younger the fossils were, the more alike they were to modern species. Two ideas were incorporated in Lamarck’s theory. The first was the theory of use and disuse; the idea that body parts used more often become stronger and larger, while parts not used slowly waste away and disappear. The second idea was the inheritance of acquired characteristics theory, the concept that modifications that occur during an organism's lifetime are passed on to its offspring. His example was the giraffe. He believed that the long neck of the giraffe resulted from the ancestors of giraffes stretching their necks longer and longer while trying to reach the highest branches of the trees.Comte de Buffon, before Lamarck, proposed ideas about evolution involving the concept, and even Charles Darwin, after Lamarck, developed his own theory of inheritance of acquired characters, pangenesis. The basic concept of inheritance of acquired characters was finally widely rejected in the early 20th century.

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