And regarding this aforementioned, pseudo-scientific theory: history has been unkind to Lamarck, for although he is credited with the scientifically discredited notion of acquired inheritance (to explain the emergence of new traits), he was in fact a remarkable thinker and scholar of natural history, and in most cases, was in agreement with Darwin’s theories, and in respect to evolutionary theories, was as “cutting edge” as Darwin or Wallace. Both Darwin and Lamarck were transitional figures in this intellectual journey, and neither could entirely free himself of the vestiges of past concepts; Lamarck simply could not unshackle himself from The Great Chain of Being, and Darwin, could not fully abandon the aesthetic appeal of progressionism (“All corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.”), despite his more forceful, earlier denunciation of it.
This crucial, missing piece of knowledge—the source and/or means of variation and stability in species (the non-blending of dominant and recessive traits)–impacted the thinking of other great minds as well. Even Darwin’s co-evolutionist contemporary and friend, the esteemed naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (who had arrived at a similar theory of natural selection), despite his powerful insights into the true age of the human species, would come to assert “some higher intelligence must have directed the process by which the human race was developed.” This contention did not sit well with Darwin, who felt that Wallace was abandoning their special, theoretical “baby” (which, as mentioned above, Darwin would also come close to doing later on).
So, it was not simply the pre- or anti-evolutionists who lent credence to these pseudo-scientific ideas (i.e., the inheritance of acquired characteristics and Intelligent Design); strangely, it was sometimes the evolutionists themselves. Evolution in the 19th Century was still a young concept, still taking its
alternately bold and tentative steps as a modern, scientific theory (and would remain highly contentious well after Darwin’s follow up book, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, in 1871).
About Michael Ricciardi
