Page 280 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

THE WINTER OF ISLAM AND THE SPRING TO COME
278

Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable varia-
tions" occur? Darwin tried to answer this
question from the standpoint of the primitive
understanding of science at that time.
According to the French biologist Chevalier
de Lamarck (1744-1829), who lived before
Darwin, living creatures passed on the traits
they acquired during their lifetime to the next
generation. He asserted that these traits,

French naturalist Lamarck which accumulated from one generation to
another, caused new species to be formed.
For instance, he claimed that giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they
struggled to eat the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from
generation to generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The Origin of Species,
for instance, he said that some bears going into water to find food trans-
formed themselves into whales over time. 75
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel
(1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the
twentieth century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits
were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell
out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

Neo-Darwinism and

Mutations
In order to find a solution,
Darwinists advanced the
"Modern Synthetic Theory," or
as it is more commonly known,
Neo-Darwinism, at the end of
the 1930s. Neo-Darwinism
added mutations, which are
distortions formed in the genes
of living beings due to such ex-
ternal factors as radiation or