GC034 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Geek Counterpoint -- Your antidote to soundbite science!

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a French biologist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and can be credited with a number of advances in the study of species origins and (in particular) invertebrate biology. Lamarck was an early proponent of evolution via natural causes, decades before Darwin's introduction of natural selection as the mechanism behind it. Despite Lamarck's bona fide contributions to science, he's now remembered mainly in connection with the discredited theory of evolutionary change as the "inheritance of acquired traits" (a.k.a. Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution). While he did promote a form of the theory that now bears his name, it should be noted that he didn't originate it, he was far from the only scientist to promote it, and many of the excesses of "Lamarckism" can be traced to proponents of the theory that lived long after him (Kammerer and Lysenko, in particular). After years of abuse in textbooks, it's ironic that Lamarckian evolution actually has some basis in fact -- but only at the cellular level, and in sociological studies of cultural evolution. Listen to this week's episode, and you'll have a much fuller understanding of this poorly understood, and often unappreciated scientific pathfinder.