(September 18, 2013 at 9:30 pm)Chas Wrote: Calling Lamarck the real father of evolutionary theory is not just a stretch, it's completely wrong.I'm aware of Lamarck's ideas- and environmental changes were secondary in his consideration, although important. He was the first scientist to really postulate a coherent theory of evolution. It was wrong in the main, but it dealt with the obvious changes observed over time, and was a GREAT first attempt at describing why we see the changes we do. The man deserves respect and he mostly gets contempt now- from people who can crack a textbook and learn about DNA easily.
His view was that the environment drove changes and those changes were heritable. This is utterly incorrect in every respect.
I'm defensive of Jean-Baptiste, as you can probably tell.
