Lamarckian Inheritance

Peter J Bowler, Queen's University, Belfast, UK

Published online: September 2006

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005877

Lamarckian inheritance requires the hereditary transmission of characters acquired by the organism in the course of its adult life, usually through the adoption of new habits in a new environment. Although widely accepted in the nineteenth century, it has been rejected by modern geneticists.

Keywords: Lamarckism; acquired characteristics; use inheritance; soft heredity

 References
    book Bowler PJ (1983) The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    book Bowler PJ (1989) The Mendelian Revolution: The Emergence of Hereditarian Concepts in Modern Science and Society. London: Athlone.
    book Gould SJ (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    book Joravsky D (1970) The Lysenko Affair. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    book Koestler A (1971) The Case of the Midwife Toad. London: Hutchinson.
    book Lamarck JB (1914) Zoological Philosophy, translated by Hugh Elliot. London, UK: Macmillan.
    book Medvedev Z (1969) The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
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    book Sapp J (1987) Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    book Steele EJ, Lindley RA and Blanden RV (1998) Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogens are Changing the Natural Selection Paradigm. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin/Reading, MA: Prometheus Books.
 Further Reading
    Bocking S (1999) Alpheus Spring Packard and cave fauna in the evolution debate. Journal of the History of Biology 21: 425–456.
    Cook GM (1999) Neo-Lamarckian experimentalism in America: origins and consequences. Quarterly Review of Biology 74: 417–447.
    book Harwood J (1993) Styles of Scientific Thought: The German Genetics Community, 1900–1933. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    book Persell SM (1999) Neo-Lamarckism in France, 1870–1920. Lewiston, NY: Mellen.
    Pfeifer EJ (1965) The genesis of American neo-Lamarckism. Isis 56: 156–167.
    Rinard RG (1988) Neo-Lamarckism and technique: Hans Spemann and the development of experimental embryology. Journal of the History of Biology 21: 95–188.
    book Soyfer VN (1994) Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
    book Willey B (1960) Darwin and Butler: Two Versions of Evolution. London, UK: Chatto and Windus.

Related Sub-Topics:

Evolution: Theories and Ideas | Science and Society - General | Philosophy of the Life Sciences
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Article Title: Lamarckian Inheritance
 
How to Cite close
Bowler, Peter J(Sep 2006) Lamarckian Inheritance. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005877]