Lamarck on Evolution

 What He Got Right and What He Got Wrong

    While Lamarck did help bring evolution to light and supported it so thoroughly, I believe he was wrong in how he addressed it. Lamarck seemed to believe the spontaneous generation theory, wherein organisms can develop from essentially nothing. He also believed that anything an organism used a lot would get bigger or used more often, whereas things that were used less often (or not at all) would eventually phase out of existence from that organism. 

    Furthermore, he also seemed to believe that all organisms were evolving to become these complex, perfect versions of themselves, which implies that all simple organisms would eventually cease to exist, which is simply not the case. He also seemed to think that any traits that a parent organism possessed would be passed onto its offspring, which is also not entirely correct.

   While we can see that some traits do get passed off to their offspring, it's more genetic variation and can be randomized what they actually get, assuming the offspring are healthy. Not all mutations that one organism develops will be passed onto its offspring, nor are all mutations necessarily good or bad. Furthermore, we have plenty of species on the planet that are simple in nature and still exist. For instance, things like algae, bacteria, or even fungi such as mushrooms. All of these are considered simple organisms and they've been around for an insanely long time. 

    What's more, while things that we use less will start to disappear, it doesn't mean that they're gone for good. For example: our appendix. It's incredibly useless for our species these days and no longer helps out in digestion like it used to for our ancestors. At this point in our existence, it's just a ticking time bomb in our bodies.

    Some of the giraffes would - through microevolution - develop slightly longer necks that could enable them to reach higher sources of food, so that when food became scarce on the lower levels, they had increased overall fitness because they could reach the other food sources. So the idea "If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, for example, a "nervous fluid" would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations," seems wholly incorrect. 

(There is no escape. The giraffe is inevitable.)

(Again, have more memes to make it less dry.)