Page 138 - The Dark Spell of Darwinism

The Dark Spell of Darwinism

faster and stronger individuals. However, unquestionably, this mechanism will
not cause deer to evolve and transform themselves into another living species,
for instance, horses.
Therefore, the mechanism of natural selection has no evolutionary power.
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 varia-
tions occur. 73

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 biolo-
gist Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829), who lived
before Darwin, living creatures passed on the traits
they acquired during their lifetime to the next gen-
eration. He asserted that these traits, which accu-
French naturalist Lamarck
mulated 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 in-
stance, he said that some bears going into water to find food transformed them-
selves into whales over time. 74
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 sub-
sequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell out of favor as an evolutionary
mechanism.

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