Who Is Jean Baptiste Lamarck? Why was his theory of The Inheritance of Acquired Characters rejected?

Who Is Jean Baptiste Lamarck? Why was his theory of The Inheritance of Acquired Characters rejected?

You might be surprised to hear that Jean Baptiste Lamarck was a priest, turned a military person, turned a naturalist, and somehow a professor?

Happened on this day, August 1st; Jean Baptiste Lamarck was born in Bazentin, France, in 1744. Lamarck devoted his life to studying and exploring the natural world, and probably during your high school years, you studied his theory of evolution, “The Inheritance of Acquired Characters.”

Let me refresh your mind; if you don’t remember, Lamarck’s theory of evolution proposed that organisms could pass on traits acquired during their lifetime to their offspring, leading to evolutionary change. While original, his theory faced criticism and was ultimately disproved through both experimentation and the study of genetics.

Numerous real-life examples and observations showed that changes occurring in an organism during its lifetime are not inherited by its offspring. Let’s take an example of kittens (who doesn’t like kitties?); if a cat’s tail is cropped short, its kittens are still born with long tails. These observations indicated that acquired traits are not inherited, as Lamarck’s theory suggested. Instead, traits are determined by the genetic makeup of an organism, which is inherited from its parents.

But what about epigenetics?

When Charles Darwin started his evolution journey, he understood that traits are passed on from generation to generation but did not understand the mechanism behind this inheritance. At the time that Darwin’s first book was published, Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, had just begun his experiments on the inheritance of traits. Now, with a much deeper understanding of genetics, we know that traits are passed on through genes and that these genes are influenced by the external environment causing changes in gene expression without altering the DNA sequence, and that is called epigenetics. Recent studies suggest that future generations may inherit some of their parents’ experiences through epigenetic inheritance.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck was a visionary naturalist whose theory of The Inheritance of Acquired Characters, though unorthodox and disproved, kind of paved the way for advances in genetics and deeper investigation into the role of epigenetic inheritance. Remembering his work and observing how science can change based on evidence is a fascinating history. Science is right with evidence, and that is the beauty of it. Otherwise, it will never be creative or spark any curiosity.

Happy Birthday Jean Baptiste Lamarck!