Lamarck's name was in the news recently when Columbia University Medical Center researchers published work they said could be viewed as a partial vindication of so-called Lamarckian evolution - a term that's come to mean the inheritance of acquired traits, no DNA needed.
In this case, flatworms were exposed to viruses; they mounted a defensive mechanism, and then passed that immunity down through several generations of offspring.
This is not exactly a vindication of Lamarck, because he did not invent what people think of as Lamarckian evolution, said historian Robert Richards of the University of Chicago.
It was popular wisdom in Lamarck's time that offspring could inherit acquired traits, Richards said. Lamarck's error was in accepting that, but then Darwin did, too.
What Lamarck should be remembered for was proposing that living things evolved and that over long periods of time this process could transform one species into another.
In Lamarck's time, the general view among naturalists was that God had created each species, said Richards. Lamarck's writings were courageous in light of this, and he was mercilessly attacked by the most eminent French naturalist of the time, Georges Cuvier, who embraced a creationist view. Cuvier, said Richards, "was Lamarck's greatest nemesis."
The other famous proponent of evolution in the 1700s was Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus, though the earlier Darwin's ideas were considered less systematic than Lamarck's.
Lamarck had earned renown as a botanist, and in studying animals, was first to draw the distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates. His theory of evolution was based partly on his study of seashells, where he noted a gradation of traits from one species to another.
