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Monday, March 09, 2009

Epigenetics, Lamarck, and Darwin.

 
Ryan Gregory at Genomicron educates us about Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck and Charles Darwin [Lamarck didn't say it, Darwin did.
What people insist on dubbing "Lamarckian inheritance" in the context of epigenetics is actually closer to the view held by Darwin than by Lamarck....


2 comments :

Spencer Troxell said...

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A. Vargas said...

Greg has found a difference between Lamarck and Darwin in which Darwin i seems closer to the point than Lamarck.

Still, I find this and other "internalist" manifestations of Lamarck to be interesting.

It is still debatable to what degree some environmental modifications act simply as "deformations" of the environment, vs. other that are complex, and can be argue to largely be some "built in" response (for instance, growing wings in response to predator kairomones). West Eberhardt discusses this in her book.