I don’t know enough about evolutionary science to really write that much informed about it, but this story is blowing my mind:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong
Particularly this bit:
“But Lamarck was scorned for a much more general apparent mistake: the idea that lifestyle might be able to influence heredity. "Today," notes David Shenk, "any high school student knows that genes are passed on unchanged from parent to child, and to the next generation and the next. Lifestyle cannot alter heredity. Except now it turns out that it can . . ."
What?! It turns out Lamarck was right (or at least not totally wrong). The one thing this article doesn’t get over is what a major, major heresy this is – Lamarck is often wheeled out as an example of “bad science” and is generally extremely reviled. And for the article to state that such a key tenet of evolutionary theory (the inviolability of the gene) is now up for questioning – it’s a major revolution in thinking.
The article has lots of other good stuff to say as well. Well worth a read.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong
Particularly this bit:
“But Lamarck was scorned for a much more general apparent mistake: the idea that lifestyle might be able to influence heredity. "Today," notes David Shenk, "any high school student knows that genes are passed on unchanged from parent to child, and to the next generation and the next. Lifestyle cannot alter heredity. Except now it turns out that it can . . ."
What?! It turns out Lamarck was right (or at least not totally wrong). The one thing this article doesn’t get over is what a major, major heresy this is – Lamarck is often wheeled out as an example of “bad science” and is generally extremely reviled. And for the article to state that such a key tenet of evolutionary theory (the inviolability of the gene) is now up for questioning – it’s a major revolution in thinking.
The article has lots of other good stuff to say as well. Well worth a read.