Words: Katie Cutforth 

One of the great questions considered by humanity since the dawn of time is how did we humans gain the characteristics that set us apart from other animals? The world’s brightest minds debated this question for millennia before reaching the conclusions that are generally believed today.  

We all know Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, or ‘survival of the fittest’. But before Darwinism, another theory of biological evolution was put forward by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.  

Lamarck was a French naturalist and one of the founding professors of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris in 1793. An expert on invertebrates (a term he coined), Lamarck’s work on classifying animals was considered groundbreaking in its day. Through his observations of animals and fossils, Lamarck became interested in the ways that living creatures adapt to their environments to survive.  

In 1809, Lamarck published his theory of evolution entitled The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics. It was based on the principle that physical changes in organisms during the course of their life could be passed on to their offspring. Lamarck proposed that giraffes evolved to have long necks as a result of generations of them stretching to reach higher leaves.  

He believed that a pianist with dextrous fingers, strengthened through years of practice, would pass on that dexterity to their children so that they would play the piano naturally without investing the time in strengthening their fingers. On the other hand, if a muscle became smaller during the organism’s lifetime through lack of use, that muscle would be diminished in its offspring.  

Although Lamarckism was widely discredited by the 1930s, it endured in the Soviet Union until the mid-20th century. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were strong Lamarckians, believing that the principle would guarantee the continued improvement of humanity. And while Lamarck’s theory may seem laughably implausible today, it had an undeniable influence on later evolutionary theory.  

Indeed, by highlighting the crucial role that the environment plays in shaping the species that live in it, Lamarck arguably gave rise to theories of Darwin that we hold true today.