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Lamarckism, a theory of evolution based on the principle that physical changes in organisms during their lifetime—such as greater development of an organ or a part through increased use—could be transmitted to their offspring.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
And in 1801, a French naturalist named Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck took a great conceptual step and proposed a full-blown theory of evolution. Lamarck started his scientific career as a botanist, but in 1793 he became one of the founding professors of the Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle as an expert on ...
The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as a supplement to his concept of orthogenesis, a drive towards complexity.
Lamarck's contribution to evolutionary theory consisted of the first truly cohesive theory of biological evolution, in which an alchemical complexifying force drove organisms up a ladder of complexity, and a second environmental force adapted them to local environments through use and disuse of characteristics, differentiating them from other ...
Though he was building on the work of his mentor, Count George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) is often credited with making the first large advance toward modern evolutionary theory because he was the first to propose a mechanism by which the gradual change of species might take place.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck argued for a very different view of evolution than Darwin's. Lamarck believed that simple life forms continually came into existence from dead matter and continually...
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