Page 142 - Consciousness in the Cell

CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE CELL

Lamarck believed that
giraffes evolved from
such animals as ante-
lopes. In his view, the
necks of these grass-
eating animals gradu-
ally grew longer, and
they eventually turned
into giraffes. The laws
of inheritance discove-
red by Mendel in 1865
proved that it was im-
possible for properties
acquired during life to
be handed on to sub-
sequent generations.
Lamarck's giraffe fairy
tale was thus consig-
ned to the wastebin of
history.

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 Men-
del (1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flouris-
hed 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-Darwi-
nism, at the end of the 1930s. Neo-Darwinism added mutations,
which are distortions formed in the genes of living beings due to

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