It is matter of confusion. What really had Lamark himself (and “the lamarkists”) in mind? It was quite clear view. There is well-known biological phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity. Organisms may change their phenotypes in different environment or as a result of exercise. Lamark thought that these changed (acquired) traits can be transmitted to the progeny. If white man is sunbathed he will get brown or even black. (It is adaptation to radiation.). Lamark thought that that the children of that man may become brown without sun radiation. Essence of Lamarkism is as follows: environment creates organisms deliberately, purposefully, makes them adapted. This view is clearly nonscientific. Environment cannot behave purposefully.

The habitual term “acquired traits” may be misleading. It hints that traits are created by environment. I am white man. I may be also brown man. Why to think that “white” is inherited and “brown” is acquired”? The real trait is “from white to brown depending on environment”.

This ability to be different in different environment is inheritable property of organism. And this ability is adaptive. The resent resurrection of Lamarkism (because of Jablonka and Lamb) is just confusion. Lamarkism is inheritance of acquired traits. And nothing more.

All traits are acquired, and all are not inherited, or innate, because—strictly speaking—the fertilized ovum with its chromosomes, organelles, proteins and membranes is the only stuff inherited. All the rest is created de novo by the organism, not by the environment, in the course of ontogenesis.

The reductionist construal of DNA as the sole heredity substance is an oversimplification. The existence of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic inheritance (Jablonka and Lamb 2005) shows that the material transmitted from generation to generation is not only DNA; there is hierarchy of heredity substances. We really need a holistic comprehension of the phenomenon of life. In the case of unicellular organisms, daughter cells inherit not only the entire genome but also the entire equipment for reproduction of the mature cell, in fact, no less than the whole young cell. Without this equipment, the genome would be just a dead text with nothing to read it. By analogy, the “heredity substance” of a population of sexual organisms is not just a gene pool, but the generation as a whole, overlapping generations. There is no special substance whose sole function is heredity. Heredity is an integral property of living entities, their ability of accurate self-reproduction. Depending on what biological entity is considered, a given trait may be “acquired” or “inherited”. For me personally, my Russian language is an acquired trait; for Russia, it is inherited; whereas the corresponding trait of all mankind is “diversity of languages,” this trait being inherited.

DNA is a very important component of the entity; it is the basic memory of a cell, but there are other levels of memory. Most importantly, “heredity in action” is not just a memory; it is the process carried out by the whole living system. Ontogenesis is carried out in the environment, but the two participants of the process—the organism and its environment—are not isomorphic and cannot be regarded as equal partners. Even the simplest cell, a minimal quant of life, is an incredibly complex and high-organized system. The cell is a real thermodynamic miracle. What is the environment? For example, for Cyanobacteria, and all green plants, the minimum environment includes water, CO2, mineral salts, and light. In such a milieu, the cell builds itself and multiplies, producing thousands of different proteins and other macromolecules, and a lot of low molecular weight organics. It is the creation of its own world from nearly nothing! How can we justly equate such unequal counterparts?! The organism is organized while the environment is chaotic; the organism is creative while the environment is destructive; the organism reifies an ontogenetic program during its life, while the environment has no intention about the organism; the organism knows the environment, takes selectively what it needs and protects itself against what is harmful, while the environment knows nothing about the organism; the organism is alive while the environment is dead. The organism is infinitely higher than the environment in structural, thermodynamic and informational contexts. The organism is existence while the environment is the conditions in which the organism exists.

Not only lay people, but also scientists sometimes treat energy as a spiritual force; however energy in itself is an entropic, i.e. destructive, factor. It is also a component of the environment and, as such, not endowed with creative ability. The expression “the environment modifies the organism” is heuristically harmful. It ascribes creativity to the environment whereas the opposite is true: organisms adaptively modify their bodies to different environments. This capability, phenotypic plasticity, is a property of the organism, not of the environment. The Darwinian selection of random heritable changes saves organisms from erosion produced by the environment because the environment does not settle on the changes themselves.

Adaptive evolution in its extreme manifestation, at a high selective advantage, would

be indistinguishable from “Lamarckian evolution” by its evolutionary consequences. Undergoing rapid genetic change in a changing environment, species would lose their self-identity and turn into a derivative of the environment. Real species last in time, and therefore, demonstrate resistance to environmental challenges, both direct (Lamarckism) and those acting as selective factors (Darwinism). Were adaptive evolution not severely restricted by the necessity of maintaining an internal perfection of the organism, it would lead to the same final outcome as the imaginary Lamarckian evolution: degradation and chaos, Brownian motion of ephemeral forms bringing organisms down to the thermodynamic level of the dead environment. In other words, there is no Lamarckian evolution in reality. The notorious forming force of environment should be regarded as a metaphor, and a bad one. Of course, Lamarkism is not dead because it is believing, not scientific theory. I know that many very clever people believe in Lamarkism and during their entire life search for its evidence. Be kind and let them to believe.

I am far from the thought that environment plays no role in ontogeny and phylogeny. I am not even going to ignore the famous mantra “organism-environment unity”. I just state that the two parts of this unity are ontologically different and this difference has not been properly outlined. If there were no water, no SCUBA gear and waterproof coats would have ever appeared. But to say that these things result from interaction between human beings and water would be clumsy. When it is raining, I open an umbrella. Yet I do not like to think that environment rules my behavior. Any interaction of a living system with environment is of a similar sort: creativity, reason, will and mind, are on the side of living systems.

Nurture is not environment. It is a component of living systems that evolved along with organisms. Nurture is just a mechanism of ontogenesis aimed at proper maturation of the individual organisms. In case of sexual organisms, the Darwinian individual is the biological species evolving as a whole (Shcherbakov 2010, 2013). Parents are not the environment of their children. Rather they are continuation of the womb, the extended phenotype (Dawkins 1982). The same is true for teachers, tutors, mentors, preceptors, and for other population members. Their relation to the individual organism is the same as the relation of cell to chromosome. It may be interesting to analyze such an “environment” separately from the organism. But it is important not to forget to reunite the whole entity.

So, why the question that is it dead, you should ask has it re-emerged?

Lamark must be feeling vindicated!

It is matter of confusion. What really had Lamark himself (and “the lamarkists”) in mind? It was quite clear view. There is well-known biological phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity. Organisms may change their phenotypes in different environment or as a result of exercise. Lamark thought that these changed (acquired) traits can be transmitted to the progeny. If white man is sunbathed he will get brown or even black. (It is adaptation to radiation.). Lamark thought that that the children of that man may become brown without sun radiation. Essence of Lamarkism is as follows: environment creates organisms deliberately, purposefully, makes them adapted. This view is clearly nonscientific. Environment cannot behave purposefully.

The habitual term “acquired traits” may be misleading. It hints that traits are created by environment. I am white man. I may be also brown man. Why to think that “white” is inherited and “brown” is acquired”? The real trait is “from white to brown depending on environment”.

This ability to be different in different environment is inheritable property of organism. And this ability is adaptive. The resent resurrection of Lamarkism (because of Jablonka and Lamb) is just confusion. Lamarkism is inheritance of acquired traits. And nothing more.

All traits are acquired, and all are not inherited, or innate, because—strictly speaking—the fertilized ovum with its chromosomes, organelles, proteins and membranes is the only stuff inherited. All the rest is created de novo by the organism, not by the environment, in the course of ontogenesis.

The reductionist construal of DNA as the sole heredity substance is an oversimplification. The existence of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic inheritance (Jablonka and Lamb 2005) shows that the material transmitted from generation to generation is not only DNA; there is hierarchy of heredity substances. We really need a holistic comprehension of the phenomenon of life. In the case of unicellular organisms, daughter cells inherit not only the entire genome but also the entire equipment for reproduction of the mature cell, in fact, no less than the whole young cell. Without this equipment, the genome would be just a dead text with nothing to read it. By analogy, the “heredity substance” of a population of sexual organisms is not just a gene pool, but the generation as a whole, overlapping generations. There is no special substance whose sole function is heredity. Heredity is an integral property of living entities, their ability of accurate self-reproduction. Depending on what biological entity is considered, a given trait may be “acquired” or “inherited”. For me personally, my Russian language is an acquired trait; for Russia, it is inherited; whereas the corresponding trait of all mankind is “diversity of languages,” this trait being inherited.

DNA is a very important component of the entity; it is the basic memory of a cell, but there are other levels of memory. Most importantly, “heredity in action” is not just a memory; it is the process carried out by the whole living system. Ontogenesis is carried out in the environment, but the two participants of the process—the organism and its environment—are not isomorphic and cannot be regarded as equal partners. Even the simplest cell, a minimal quant of life, is an incredibly complex and high-organized system. The cell is a real thermodynamic miracle. What is the environment? For example, for Cyanobacteria, and all green plants, the minimum environment includes water, CO2, mineral salts, and light. In such a milieu, the cell builds itself and multiplies, producing thousands of different proteins and other macromolecules, and a lot of low molecular weight organics. It is the creation of its own world from nearly nothing! How can we justly equate such unequal counterparts?! The organism is organized while the environment is chaotic; the organism is creative while the environment is destructive; the organism reifies an ontogenetic program during its life, while the environment has no intention about the organism; the organism knows the environment, takes selectively what it needs and protects itself against what is harmful, while the environment knows nothing about the organism; the organism is alive while the environment is dead. The organism is infinitely higher than the environment in structural, thermodynamic and informational contexts. The organism is existence while the environment is the conditions in which the organism exists.

Not only lay people, but also scientists sometimes treat energy as a spiritual force; however energy in itself is an entropic, i.e. destructive, factor. It is also a component of the environment and, as such, not endowed with creative ability. The expression “the environment modifies the organism” is heuristically harmful. It ascribes creativity to the environment whereas the opposite is true: organisms adaptively modify their bodies to different environments. This capability, phenotypic plasticity, is a property of the organism, not of the environment. The Darwinian selection of random heritable changes saves organisms from erosion produced by the environment because the environment does not settle on the changes themselves.

Adaptive evolution in its extreme manifestation, at a high selective advantage, would

be indistinguishable from “Lamarckian evolution” by its evolutionary consequences. Undergoing rapid genetic change in a changing environment, species would lose their self-identity and turn into a derivative of the environment. Real species last in time, and therefore, demonstrate resistance to environmental challenges, both direct (Lamarckism) and those acting as selective factors (Darwinism). Were adaptive evolution not severely restricted by the necessity of maintaining an internal perfection of the organism, it would lead to the same final outcome as the imaginary Lamarckian evolution: degradation and chaos, Brownian motion of ephemeral forms bringing organisms down to the thermodynamic level of the dead environment. In other words, there is no Lamarckian evolution in reality. The notorious forming force of environment should be regarded as a metaphor, and a bad one. Of course, Lamarkism is not dead because it is believing, not scientific theory. I know that many very clever people believe in Lamarkism and during their entire life search for its evidence. Be kind and let them to believe.

I am far from the thought that environment plays no role in ontogeny and phylogeny. I am not even going to ignore the famous mantra “organism-environment unity”. I just state that the two parts of this unity are ontologically different and this difference has not been properly outlined. If there were no water, no SCUBA gear and waterproof coats would have ever appeared. But to say that these things result from interaction between human beings and water would be clumsy. When it is raining, I open an umbrella. Yet I do not like to think that environment rules my behavior. Any interaction of a living system with environment is of a similar sort: creativity, reason, will and mind, are on the side of living systems.

Nurture is not environment. It is a component of living systems that evolved along with organisms. Nurture is just a mechanism of ontogenesis aimed at proper maturation of the individual organisms. In case of sexual organisms, the Darwinian individual is the biological species evolving as a whole (Shcherbakov 2010, 2013). Parents are not the environment of their children. Rather they are continuation of the womb, the extended phenotype (Dawkins 1982). The same is true for teachers, tutors, mentors, preceptors, and for other population members. Their relation to the individual organism is the same as the relation of cell to chromosome. It may be interesting to analyze such an “environment” separately from the organism. But it is important not to forget to reunite the whole entity.

I also notice that non-genetic inheritance of characters, such as epigenetics, last only up to a maximum of F3, so even if few acquired characters are inherited it might not influence the process of evolution.

The epigenetic variants of genes called epialleles may be quite stable lasting a lot longer than just three generations. A classical example is an epilalle in Linaria vulgaris plant, originally described more than 250 years ago by Linnaeus and molecularly well-characterized by Coen and colleagues (Nature 401, 157-161, 1999). In this plant a gene called LCYC1 is heavily methylated and inactive producing a strong phenotype associated with altered flower morphology. The revertants are existing but their frequency is low. This points to the possiblity that some epigenetic variants are fixed and copied to next generation with almost similar fidelity as are the mutation in DNA. Certainly, it is unknown whether the stable LCYC1 epimutation was induced environmentally or whether it arose just by chance. Sadly, we cannot therefore distinguish between Lamarkistic and Darwinian modes of evolution.

Dear Ales Kovaric:

Epigenetic mutation is just mutation. Probably such mutations arise from time to time. Epigenetic state may be stably reproduced in generations. The entire embryogenesis based on stability of epigenetic state. Generative cells must have their own epigenetic patterns. We know that germ line cells are maximally protected from environmental impacts. Yet any protection is not absolute. It may fail. But why it is Lamarkism? Why to think that it may be Lamarkism? Just because it would be sensation? Lamarkism implies inheritance of adaptive phenotypic patterns. Notorious epigenetic changes discussed by Jablonka and Lamb were not adaptive. They were damages.

Dear Victor,

Thank you for the response. I agree that the mammalian germline is well protected against perturbation by evironmental factors. But plant differ from animals in the absence of true germline since gametic cells may aris from almost any somatic cell. Changes in soma induced by environment may be relatively easily passed to next generation opening a possibility of Lamark inheritance. Plants have also evolved a number of sophisticated tools such as small RNAs, complex DNA methylation system, histone modifications to pass epigenetic changes over generations some which could, in theory, be considered as Lamarkism. The trouble with Lamarkism is that there is not a single solid example of adaptive inheritance in any system throughout the tree of life. Most cases of acquired inheritance can be explained as natural selection acting on induced epigenetic or genetic variation. This is certainly not Lamarkism but rather hidden Darwinism. Certainly, more solid experimental research is needed to explore biological phenomena with blueprints of Lamark.

I thought the theorywais there to show how evolution used to be viewed but it has been shown not to be realistic

I've had similar discussions concerning phenotypic plasticity, and a person even said what I was describing sounded like Lamarckism. When you approach science as what it is, constantly changing, it's interesting to see how "dead" theories can re-emerge. Epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity are perfect examples of something you could say might resemble Lamarckism, but they are on that continuum of genetics and external pressures. To be honest, I hadn't considered that it resembled Lamarck's theory until it was brought up to me.

Let's see:

Lamarck's complexifying force: "The rapid motion of fluids will reach canals between delicate tissues. Soon their flow will begin to vary, leading to the emergence of distinct organs. The fluids themselves, now more elaborate, will become more complex, engendering a greater variety of secretions and substances composing the organs." - Today we know that this is not true.

Lamarck's First Law: In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears". - Today we know that this is not true for every organ, and when it is (e.g. muscles), it's not inherited.

Second Law: "ALL the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; ALL these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young." - Today we know that SOME (not ALL) enviromental influence can be inherited (but not those created by use and disuse), at least for some generations.

Epigenetic changes can be described as soft inheritance, but they not satisfy a Lamarckian way of evolution, that was strongly based on an adaptative, goal-oriented change caused by the environment influence and/or use and disuse.

And Phenotypic plasticity can only be associated to soft inheritance when we have epigenetic inheritance and/or genetic assimilation.

One case the I'm aware, that really seems to be like Lamarckian evolution in some aspects, is Lemke etal. (2003,2004) work with antibodies, although I'm not a immunologist to avail their work fully.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10671532_Non-genetic_inheritable_potential_of_maternal_antibodies?ev=prf_pub

https://www.researchgate.net/publication 8661797_Lamarckian_inheritance_by_somatically_acquired_maternal_IgG_phenotypes?ev=prf_pub

Article Non-genetic inheritable potential of maternal antibodies