Page 219 - The Miracles of Our Prophet (saas)
P. 219
Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)
Darwin was also aware of this fact and had to state this in his
book The Origin of Species:
Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual
differences or variations occur. 110
Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable
variations" occur? Darwin tried to
answer this question from the
standpoint of the primitive under-
standing 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, which accumulat- Lamarck
ed 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 wa-
ter to find food transformed themselves into whales over
time. 111
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor
Mendel (1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics,
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