Page 395 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual differences or
variations occur. (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Nat-
ural Selection, The Modern Library, New York, p. 127)

L Lamarck's Impact

So, how could these "favourable 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 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. (Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edi-
tion, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184.)

Lamarck believed that giraffes evolved from
such animals as antelopes. In his view, the
necks of these grass-eating animals
gradually grew longer, and they
eventually turned into giraffes. The
laws of inheritance discovered by
Mendel in 1865 proved that it was
impossible for properties acquired
during life to be handed on to subse-
quent generations. Lamarck's giraf-
fe fairy tale was thus consigned
to the wastebin of history.

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