Inheritance of acquired characters

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. The hypothesis is often called Lamarckism, as it has misleadingly been equated with the evolutionary theory of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). The idea was however already known to Hippocrates and Aristotle in ancient times, and was widely accepted by the eighteenth century. Lamarck has been used in biology schoolbooks as a mistaken forerunner of Charles Darwin, ignoring the fact that Darwin's theory of pangenesis was Lamarckian, implying the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

The inheritance of acquired characteristics was proposed in ancient times by Hippocrates and Aristotle, and was commonly accepted near to Lamarck's time; Erasmus Darwin had described it in his Zoonomia, 1794. The historian of science Conway Zirkle wrote that:

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.

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