Larmarckism

 Larmarckism

    Many people believe that Darwin was the first person to propose the theory of evolution and organisms changing over time. However, Jean Baptiste Lamarck was the first to come up with a theory of evolution. He and Darwin both believed that life is not fixed, and in order to survive, organisms must adapt to environmental changes. However, Lamarck and Darwin had different views on how evolution occurs. Lamarck believed that evolution was change through use and disuse of something. He believed that the evolutionary change occurs within the lifetime of the organism experiencing the environmental change. The example of this is that a giraffe would stretch and use its neck to reach leaves on a tree. Since it is using its neck, the neck will become longer and be passed on to generations. We know now, that evolution does not occur like this. Using the example of giraffes, in order for the evolution of longer necks to occur than natural selection would need to happen. Something would need to happen in order to make the gene for longer necks more prevalent in a population. We also know that it takes at least one generation for evolution to occur. It does not happen within the same lifetime of the organism. Lamarck also believed that life began through spontaneous generation. There have been multiple experiments done to disprove spontaneous generation. Experiments done by Francesco Redi and Louis Pasteur proved that life cannot generate from nothing. 

                                              

Here is an image that shows the two experiments that were done that disproved the theory of spontaneous generation.

These experiments show us that living organisms have to come from living matter. The disproving of spontaneous generation also goes along with Biology's Cell Theory. One part of the theory states that all cells must come from another cell. This is the same as living organisms having to come from living organisms. 

References: 

https://www.britannica.com/science/spontaneous-generation