Page 86 - Before You Regret

84 Before You Regret

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 genera-
tion. 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 century, utterly demol-
ished the legend that acquired traits were passed on to sub-
sequent 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-