Page 229 - For Men of Understanding

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. 7

Lamarck's Impact

So, how could these "favorable variations" 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, 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 transformed
themselves into whales over time. 8
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel (1822-84)
and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the twentieth cen-
tury, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits were
passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selec-
tion fell out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

Lamarck believed that
giraffes evolved from
animals resembling
antelopes. In his view,
these creatures’ necks
grew as they stretched up
to eat the leaves on trees,
and they gradually turned
into giraffes. The laws of
inheritance discovered by
Mendel in 1865 proved
that it was impossible for
characteristics acquired
during the course of life
to be handed on to later
generations. Thus
Lamarck’s just-so story
was consigned to the
wastebasket of history.

The Evolution Deceit 227