93-544: The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby is a children's novel by Charles Kingsley . Written in 1862–1863 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine , it was first published in its entirety in 1863. It was written as part satire in support of Charles Darwin 's On the Origin of Species . The book was extremely popular in the United Kingdom and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades. The protagonist
186-448: A Darwinian framework. However, the significance of epigenetics in evolution is uncertain. Critics such as the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne point out that epigenetic inheritance lasts for only a few generations, so it is not a stable basis for evolutionary change. The evolutionary biologist T. Ryan Gregory contends that epigenetic inheritance should not be considered Lamarckian. According to Gregory, Lamarck did not claim that
279-629: A Lamarckian element in evolution but the processes do not challenge the main tenets of the modern evolutionary synthesis as modern Lamarckians have claimed. Haig argued for the primacy of DNA and evolution of epigenetic switches by natural selection. Haig has written that there is a "visceral attraction" to Lamarckian evolution from the public and some scientists, as it posits the world with a meaning, in which organisms can shape their own evolutionary destiny. Thomas Dickens and Qazi Rahman (2012) have argued that epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and histone modification are genetically inherited under
372-509: A change in DNA sequence (genotype) and that such changes may be induced spontaneously or in response to environmental factors—Lamarck's "acquired traits." Determining which observed phenotypes are genetically inherited and which are environmentally induced remains an important and ongoing part of the study of genetics, developmental biology, and medicine. The prokaryotic CRISPR system and Piwi-interacting RNA could be classified as Lamarckian, within
465-440: A conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development into all forms needful pro tempore and pro loco , as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He Himself had made", asking "whether the former be not the loftier thought." In the book, for example, Kingsley argues that no person is qualified to say that something that they have never seen (like
558-436: A factor that Lamarck rejected: inheritance of direct effects of the environment" and neo-Lamarckism is closer to Darwin's pangenesis than Lamarck's views. Simpson wrote, "the inheritance of acquired characters, failed to meet the tests of observation and has been almost universally discarded by biologists." Zirkle pointed out that Lamarck did not originate the hypothesis that acquired characteristics could be inherited , so it
651-595: A free Norse-Saxon race". He believed the ancestors of Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Germanic peoples had physically fought beside the god Odin , and that the British monarchy was genetically descended from the god. Kingsley has been accused of intensely antagonistic views of the Irish , whom he described in derogatory terms. Visiting County Sligo in Ireland, he wrote a letter to his wife from Markree Castle in 1860: "I am haunted by
744-500: A heated dispute lasting three years developed over human evolution , Kingsley gently satirised the debate, known as the Great Hippocampus Question , as the "Great Hippopotamus Question". Kingsley's concern for social reform is illustrated in his classic, The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863), a tale about a boy chimney sweep , which retained its popularity well into the 20th century. The story mentions
837-501: A human soul or a water-baby) does not exist . "How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none ... And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing ; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies... You must not talk about " ain’t ” and " can’t ” when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which
930-592: A letter (later evoked by the New York Sun ' s " Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus " in 1897): My dear Julian – I could never make sure about that Water Baby. I have seen Babies in water and Babies in bottles; the Baby in the water was not in a bottle and the Baby in the bottle was not in water. My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in
1023-445: A limited validity of Lamarckism. The inheritance of the hologenome , consisting of the genomes of all an organism's symbiotic microbes as well as its own genome, is also somewhat Lamarckian in effect, though entirely Darwinian in its mechanisms. The inheritance of acquired characteristics was proposed in ancient times and remained a current idea for many centuries. The historian of science Conway Zirkle wrote in 1935 that: Lamarck
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#17330858927621116-444: A misnomer, and truly a discredit to the memory of a man and his much more comprehensive system." The period of the history of evolutionary thought between Darwin's death in the 1880s, and the foundation of population genetics in the 1920s and the beginnings of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s, is called the eclipse of Darwinism by some historians of science. During that time many scientists and philosophers accepted
1209-470: A neo-Lamarckian view of human evolution. The German anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch relied on a neo-Lamarckian model of evolution to try and explain the origin of bipedalism . Neo-Lamarckism remained influential in biology until the 1940s when the role of natural selection was reasserted in evolution as part of the modern evolutionary synthesis. Herbert Graham Cannon , a British zoologist, defended Lamarckism in his 1959 book Lamarck and Modern Genetics . In
1302-467: A new habit when faced with an environmental challenge and shape the whole future course of evolution. Scientists from the 1860s onwards conducted numerous experiments that purported to show Lamarckian inheritance. Some examples are described in the table. A century after Lamarck, scientists and philosophers continued to seek mechanisms and evidence for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Experiments were sometimes reported as successful, but from
1395-519: A novelist under the pseudonym Lucas Malet . Kingsley's biography, written by his widow in 1877, was entitled, Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life. Kingsley received letters from Thomas Huxley in 1860, and sent letters in 1863 discussing Huxley's early ideas on agnosticism . Charles Kingsley died of pneumonia on 23 January 1875 at Eversley, Hampshire, aged 55. He was buried there in St. Mary's Churchyard. Kingsley's interest in history
1488-420: A pretty live garden again, after man’s dirt is cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen. Literary critic, Naomi Wood, treats Kingsley's "characteristically Victorian naturalism as proto-environmentalism," since it both educates the reader about the environment but also advocates political action to protect the environment. Kingsley
1581-640: A private tutor to the Prince of Wales . In 1869, Kingsley resigned his Cambridge professorship and served from 1870 to 1873 as a canon of Chester Cathedral . While there, he founded the Chester Society for Natural Science, Literature and Art, which was prominent in the establishment of the Grosvenor Museum . In 1872, he agreed to become the 19th president of the Birmingham and Midland Institute . In 1873, he
1674-546: A series of adventures and lessons, and enjoys the community of other water-babies on Saint Brendan's Island once he proves himself a moral creature. The major spiritual leaders in his new world are the fairies Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby (a reference to the Golden Rule ), Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, and Mother Carey. Weekly, Tom is allowed the company of Ellie, who became a water-baby after he did. Grimes, his old master, drowns as well, and in his final adventure, Tom travels to
1767-428: A supplement to his concept of orthogenesis , a drive towards complexity . Introductory textbooks contrast Lamarckism with Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution by natural selection . However, Darwin's book On the Origin of Species gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse, as Lamarck had done, and his own concept of pangenesis similarly implied soft inheritance. Many researchers from
1860-467: A systematic theoretical framework for understanding evolution. He saw evolution as comprising four laws: In 1830, in an aside from his evolutionary framework, Lamarck briefly mentioned two traditional ideas in his discussion of heredity, in his day considered to be generally true. The first was the idea of use versus disuse; he theorized that individuals lose characteristics they do not require, or use, and develop characteristics that are useful. The second
1953-413: A tail or even with a shorter tail. In 1889, he stated that "901 young were produced by five generations of artificially mutilated parents, and yet there was not a single example of a rudimentary tail or of any other abnormality in this organ." The experiment, and the theory behind it, were thought at the time to be a refutation of Lamarckism. The experiment's effectiveness in refuting Lamarck's hypothesis
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#17330858927622046-520: Is Tom, a young chimney sweep , who falls into a river after encountering an upper-class girl named Ellie and being chased out of her house. There he appears to drown and is transformed into a "water-baby", as he is told by a caddisfly – an insect that sheds its skin – and begins his moral education . The story is thematically concerned with Christian redemption , though Kingsley also uses the book to argue that England treats its poor badly, and to question child labour , among other themes. Tom embarks on
2139-487: Is a loose grouping of largely heterodox theories and mechanisms that emerged after Lamarck's time, rather than a coherent body of theoretical work. Neo-Lamarckian versions of evolution were widespread in the late 19th century. The idea that living things could to some degree choose the characteristics that would be inherited allowed them to be in charge of their own destiny as opposed to the Darwinian view, which placed them at
2232-473: Is critical of industrial and urban pollution and wastefulness. Catherine Judd points out that the city, the loud coal mining engines, and the stultifying country manor of a British landowner are all contrasted with an Edenic Northern English landscape. With detailed descriptions of native fauna, Kingsley immerses his protagonist into a variety of biodiverse terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems so that readers are drawn to see themselves as part of nature. The book
2325-462: Is doubtful, as it did not address the use and disuse of characteristics in response to the environment. The biologist Peter Gauthier noted in 1990 that: Can Weismann's experiment be considered a case of disuse? Lamarck proposed that when an organ was not used, it slowly, and very gradually atrophied. In time, over the course of many generations, it would gradually disappear as it was inherited in its modified form in each successive generation. Cutting
2418-497: Is incorrect to refer to it as Lamarckism: What Lamarck really did was to accept the hypothesis that acquired characters were heritable, a notion which had been held almost universally for well over two thousand years and which his contemporaries accepted as a matter of course, and to assume that the results of such inheritance were cumulative from generation to generation, thus producing, in time, new species. His individual contribution to biological theory consisted in his application to
2511-516: Is particularly associated with Christian socialism , the working men's college , and forming labour cooperatives , which failed, but encouraged later working reforms. Kingsley was born in Holne , Devon , the elder son of the Reverend Charles Kingsley and his wife, Mary Lucas Kingsley. His brother Henry Kingsley (1830–1876) and sister Charlotte Chanter (1828–1882) also became writers. He
2604-798: Is prone to wish-fulfilling interpretation." A form of Lamarckism was revived in the Soviet Union of the 1930s when Trofim Lysenko promoted the ideologically driven research programme, Lysenkoism ; this suited the ideological opposition of Joseph Stalin to genetics . Lysenkoism influenced Soviet agricultural policy which in turn was later blamed for the numerous massive crop failures experienced within Soviet states. George Gaylord Simpson in his book Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944) claimed that experiments in heredity have failed to corroborate any Lamarckian process. Simpson noted that neo-Lamarckism "stresses
2697-560: Is shown in several of his writings, including The Heroes (1856), a children's book about Greek mythology , and several historical novels, of which the best known are Hypatia (1853), Hereward the Wake (1865) and Westward Ho! (1855). From his book The Heroes the story of Perseus, the Gorgon Slayer was taken and in 1898 republished as The Story of Perseus and the Gorgon's Head . He
2790-495: Is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance . The idea is named after the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who incorporated the classical era theory of soft inheritance into his theory of evolution as
2883-457: Is vividly and truthfully described, in part stemming from his observations during a lecture tour of the United States that he undertook in 1874 and reported to his wife, Francis Eliza Grenfell Kingsley . The letters were later published. He also published his work At Last , written after he had visited the tropics. His sympathy with children taught him how to gain their interest. His version of
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2976-564: The blood of one variety of rabbit into another variety in the expectation that its offspring would show some characteristics of the first. They did not, and Galton declared that he had disproved Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis, but Darwin objected, in a letter to the scientific journal Nature , that he had done nothing of the sort, since he had never mentioned blood in his writings. He pointed out that he regarded pangenesis as occurring in protozoa and plants , which have no blood, as well as in animals. Between 1800 and 1830, Lamarck proposed
3069-541: The gonads contain information that passes from one generation to the next, unaffected by experience, and independent of the somatic (body) cells. This implied what came to be known as the Weismann barrier , as it would make Lamarckian inheritance from changes to the body difficult or impossible. Weismann conducted the experiment of removing the tails of 68 white mice , and those of their offspring over five generations, and reporting that no mice were born in consequence without
3162-455: The 1860s onwards attempted to find evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, but these have all been explained away, either by other mechanisms such as genetic contamination or as fraud . August Weismann 's experiment, considered definitive in its time, is now considered to have failed to disprove Lamarckism, as it did not address use and disuse. Later, Mendelian genetics supplanted the notion of inheritance of acquired traits, eventually leading to
3255-495: The 1960s, "biochemical Lamarckism" was advocated by the embryologist Paul Wintrebert . Neo-Lamarckism was dominant in French biology for more than a century. French scientists who supported neo-Lamarckism included Edmond Perrier (1844–1921), Alfred Giard (1846–1908), Gaston Bonnier (1853–1922) and Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985). They followed two traditions, one mechanistic, one vitalistic after Henri Bergson 's philosophy of evolution . In 1987, Ryuichi Matsuda coined
3348-660: The English people were "essentially a Teutonic race, blood-kin to the Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians". Kingsley suggested there was a "strong Norse element in Teutonism and Anglo-Saxonism". Mixing mythology and Christianity, he blended Protestantism as it was practised at the time with the Old Norse religion , saying that the Church of England was "wonderfully and mysteriously fitted for the souls of
3441-447: The Name of Science (1957): A host of experiments have been designed to test Lamarckianism. All that have been verified have proved negative. On the other hand, tens of thousands of experiments— reported in the journals and carefully checked and rechecked by geneticists throughout the world— have established the correctness of the gene-mutation theory beyond all reasonable doubt... In spite of
3534-589: The University of Cambridge. Charles entered Magdalene College, Cambridge , in 1838, and graduated first class in classics, and senior optime in 1842. He chose to pursue priesthood in the Anglican Church. In 1844, he became Rector of Eversley in Hampshire . In 1859, he was appointed chaplain to Queen Victoria . In 1860, he became Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, and, in 1861,
3627-461: The actions of external agents. Lamarck was not concerned with wounds, injuries or mutilations, and nothing that Lamarck had set forth was tested or "disproven" by the Weismann tail-chopping experiment. The historian of science Rasmus Winther stated that Weismann had nuanced views about the role of the environment on the germ plasm. Indeed, like Darwin, he consistently insisted that a variable environment
3720-485: The beginning these were either criticised on scientific grounds or shown to be fakes. For instance, in 1906, the philosopher Eugenio Rignano argued for a version that he called "centro-epigenesis", but it was rejected by most scientists. Some of the experimental approaches are described in the table. The British anthropologist Frederic Wood Jones and the South African paleontologist Robert Broom supported
3813-486: The body, though not necessarily in the bloodstream . These pangenes were microscopic particles that supposedly contained information about the characteristics of their parent cell, and Darwin believed that they eventually accumulated in the germ cells where they could pass on to the next generation the newly acquired characteristics of the parents. Darwin's half-cousin, Francis Galton , carried out experiments on rabbits , with Darwin's cooperation, in which he transfused
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3906-399: The book states (perhaps jokingly) that they never marry, claiming that in fairy tales, no one beneath the rank of prince and princess ever marries. The book ends with the caveat that it is only a fairy tale, and the reader is to believe none of it, "even if it is true". In the style of Victorian-era novels, The Water-Babies is a didactic moral fable . In it, Kingsley expresses many of
3999-488: The common prejudices of that time period, and the book includes dismissive or insulting references to Americans, Jews , Blacks , and Catholics , particularly the Irish . The book had been intended in part as a satire, a tract against child labour , as well as a serious critique of the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day in their response to Charles Darwin 's ideas on evolution , which Kingsley had been one of
4092-579: The construction of the Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway . A hotel in Westward Ho! was named after and opened by him. A hotel which was opened in 1897 in Bloomsbury , London, and named after Kingsley was founded by teetotallers , who admired Kingsley for his political views and his ideas on social reform. It still exists as The Kingsley by Thistle . Kingsley School , a private school in Bideford ,
4185-443: The control of natural selection and do not challenge the modern synthesis. They dispute the claims of Jablonka and Lamb on Lamarckian epigenetic processes. In 2015, Khursheed Iqbal and colleagues discovered that although "endocrine disruptors exert direct epigenetic effects in the exposed fetal germ cells, these are corrected by reprogramming events in the next generation." Also in 2015, Adam Weiss argued that bringing back Lamarck in
4278-454: The development of the modern synthesis , and the general abandonment of Lamarckism in biology . Despite this, interest in Lamarckism has continued. In the 21st century, experimental results in the fields of epigenetics , genetics , and somatic hypermutation demonstrated the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of traits acquired by the previous generation. These proved
4371-468: The effects of environmental stress on the growth of plants, in the belief that such environmentally-induced variation might explain much of plant evolution , and the American entomologist Alpheus Spring Packard Jr. , who studied blind animals living in caves and wrote a book in 1901 about Lamarck and his work. Also included were paleontologists like Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus Hyatt , who observed that
4464-525: The end of the world to attempt to help the man where he is being punished for his misdeeds. Tom helps Grimes to find repentance, and Grimes will be given a second chance if he can successfully perform a final penance. By proving his willingness to do things he does not like, if they are the right things to do, Tom earns himself a return to human form, and becomes "a great man of science" who "can plan railways, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth". He and Ellie are united, although
4557-505: The environment directly affected living things. Instead, Lamarck "argued that the environment created needs to which organisms responded by using some features more and others less, that this resulted in those features being accentuated or attenuated, and that this difference was then inherited by offspring." Gregory has stated that Lamarckian evolution in epigenetics is more like Darwin's point of view than Lamarck's. In 2007, David Haig wrote that research into epigenetic processes does allow
4650-544: The evidence to deny the Lamarckian hypothesis, since it lacks a key factor, namely the willful exertion of the animal in overcoming environmental obstacles. Ghiselin also considered the Weismann tail-chopping experiment to have no bearing on the Lamarckian hypothesis, writing in 1994 that: The acquired characteristics that figured in Lamarck's thinking were changes that resulted from an individual's own drives and actions, not from
4743-425: The final chapter of his book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), which gave numerous examples to demonstrate what he thought was the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Pangenesis, which he emphasised was a hypothesis, was based on the idea that somatic cells would, in response to environmental stimulation (use and disuse), throw off ' gemmules ' or 'pangenes' which travelled around
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#17330858927624836-399: The first to praise. He had been sent an advance review copy of On the Origin of Species , and wrote in his response of 18 November 1859 (four days before Darwin's book was published) that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species," and had "gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble
4929-550: The following two laws: English translation: In essence, a change in the environment brings about change in "needs" ( besoins ), resulting in change in behaviour, causing change in organ usage and development, bringing change in form over time—and thus the gradual transmutation of the species . As the evolutionary biologists and historians of science Conway Zirkle, Michael Ghiselin , and Stephen Jay Gould have pointed out, these ideas were not original to Lamarck. August Weismann 's germ plasm theory held that germline cells in
5022-668: The fossil record showed orderly, almost linear, patterns of development that they felt were better explained by Lamarckian mechanisms than by natural selection. Some people, including Cope and the Darwin critic Samuel Butler , felt that inheritance of acquired characteristics would let organisms shape their own evolution, since organisms that acquired new habits would change the use patterns of their organs, which would kick-start Lamarckian evolution. They considered this philosophically superior to Darwin's mechanism of random variation acted on by selective pressures. Lamarckism also appealed to those, like
5115-571: The gorillas shot by du Chaillu "remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and tried to say, ' Am I Not A Man And A Brother ?', but had forgotten how to use his tongue". The Water-Babies alludes to debates among biologists of its day, satirising what Kingsley had previously dubbed the "great hippocampus question" as the "great hippopotamus test". At various times the text refers to "Sir Roderick Murchison , Professor (Richard) Owen , Professor (Thomas Henry) Huxley , (and) Mr. Darwin", and thus they become explicitly part of
5208-471: The human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country [Ireland]... [for] to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours." Charles Kingsley's novel Westward Ho! led to the founding of a village by the same name (the only place name in England with an exclamation mark) and inspired
5301-535: The inheritance of acquired characteristics, just as Lamarck did, and Darwin even thought that there was some experimental evidence to support it." Gould wrote that in the late 19th century, evolutionists "re-read Lamarck, cast aside the guts of it ... and elevated one aspect of the mechanics—inheritance of acquired characters—to a central focus it never had for Lamarck himself." He argued that "the restriction of 'Lamarckism' to this relatively small and non-distinctive corner of Lamarck's thought must be labelled as more than
5394-448: The inheritance of behavioral traits, for example in chickens, rats and human populations that have experienced starvation, DNA methylation resulting in altered gene function in both the starved population and their offspring. Methylation similarly mediates epigenetic inheritance in plants such as rice. Small RNA molecules, too, may mediate inherited resistance to infection. Handel and Ramagopalan commented that "epigenetics allows
5487-490: The kind occurs—or can occur—but the notion persists for a variety of nonscientific reasons." Medawar stated there is no known mechanism by which an adaptation acquired in an individual's lifetime can be imprinted on the genome and Lamarckian inheritance is not valid unless it excludes the possibility of natural selection, but this has not been demonstrated in any experiment. Martin Gardner wrote in his book Fads and Fallacies in
5580-511: The latter to write his Apologia Pro Vita Sua . Kingsley also wrote poetry and political articles, as well as several volumes of sermons. Kingsley coined the term pteridomania (meaning "a craze for ferns") in his 1855 book Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore . Kingsley was a fervent Anglo-Saxonist , and was seen as a major proponent of the ideology, particularly in the 1840s. He proposed that
5673-687: The main protagonists in the scientific debate over human origins, rearranging his earlier satire as the "great hippopotamus test". The book won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1963. Kingsley's chief asset as a novelist lay in his descriptive faculties: the descriptions of South American scenery in Westward Ho! , of the Egyptian desert in Hypatia , and of the North Devon scenery in Two Years Ago . American scenery
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#17330858927625766-408: The making of the phenotype and that the phenotype, in turn, does not control the composition of the DNA." Peter J. Bowler has written that although many early scientists took Lamarckism seriously, it was discredited by genetics in the early twentieth century. Studies in the field of epigenetics , genetics and somatic hypermutation have highlighted the possible inheritance of traits acquired by
5859-441: The mercy of the environment. Such ideas were more popular than natural selection in the late 19th century as it made it possible for biological evolution to fit into a framework of a divine or naturally willed plan, thus the neo-Lamarckian view of evolution was often advocated by proponents of orthogenesis. According to the historian of science Peter J. Bowler, writing in 2003: One of the most emotionally compelling arguments used by
5952-409: The neo-Lamarckians of the late nineteenth century was the claim that Darwinism was a mechanistic theory which reduced living things to puppets driven by heredity. The selection theory made life into a game of Russian roulette, where life or death was predetermined by the genes one inherited. The individual could do nothing to mitigate bad heredity. Lamarckism, in contrast, allowed the individual to choose
6045-447: The next edition of his book, stating, "A celebrated author and divine has written to me that 'he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.'" When
6138-552: The old Greek stories entitled The Heroes , and Water-babies and Madam How and Lady Why , in which he deals with popular natural history, take high rank among books for children. Kingsley was influenced by Frederick Denison Maurice , and was close to many Victorian thinkers and writers, including the Scottish writer George MacDonald . Kingsley was highly critical of Roman Catholicism and his argument in print with John Henry Newman , accusing him of untruthfulness and deceit, prompted
6231-428: The peaceful co-existence of Darwinian and Lamarckian evolution." Joseph Springer and Dennis Holley commented in 2013 that: Lamarck and his ideas were ridiculed and discredited. In a strange twist of fate, Lamarck may have the last laugh. Epigenetics, an emerging field of genetics, has shown that Lamarck may have been at least partially correct all along. It seems that reversible and heritable changes can occur without
6324-597: The philosopher Herbert Spencer and the German anatomist Ernst Haeckel , who saw evolution as an inherently progressive process. The German zoologist Theodor Eimer combined Larmarckism with ideas about orthogenesis , the idea that evolution is directed towards a goal. With the development of the modern synthesis of the theory of evolution, and a lack of evidence for a mechanism for acquiring and passing on new characteristics, or even their heritability, Lamarckism largely fell from favour. Unlike neo-Darwinism , neo-Lamarckism
6417-434: The power of acquiring new parts" in response to stimuli, with each round of "improvements" being inherited by successive generations. Charles Darwin 's On the Origin of Species proposed natural selection as the main mechanism for development of species, but (like Lamarck) gave credence to the idea of heritable effects of use and disuse as a supplementary mechanism. Darwin subsequently set out his concept of pangenesis in
6510-654: The previous generation. However, the characterization of these findings as Lamarckism has been disputed. Epigenetic inheritance has been argued by scientists including Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb to be Lamarckian. Epigenetics is based on hereditary elements other than genes that pass into the germ cells. These include methylation patterns in DNA and chromatin marks on histone proteins, both involved in gene regulation . These marks are responsive to environmental stimuli, differentially affect gene expression, and are adaptive, with phenotypic effects that persist for some generations. The mechanism may also enable
6603-533: The problem of the origin of species of the view that acquired characters were inherited and in showing that evolution could be inferred logically from the accepted biological hypotheses. He would doubtless have been greatly astonished to learn that a belief in the inheritance of acquired characters is now labeled "Lamarckian," although he would almost certainly have felt flattered if evolution itself had been so designated. Peter Medawar wrote regarding Lamarckism, "very few professional biologists believe that anything of
6696-407: The rapidly increasing evidence for natural selection, Lamarck has never ceased to have loyal followers.... There is indeed a strong emotional appeal in the thought that every little effort an animal puts forth is somehow transmitted to his progeny. According to Ernst Mayr, any Lamarckian theory involving the inheritance of acquired characters has been refuted as " DNA does not directly participate in
6789-423: The reality of evolution but doubted whether natural selection was the main evolutionary mechanism. Among the most popular alternatives were theories involving the inheritance of characteristics acquired during an organism's lifetime. Scientists who felt that such Lamarckian mechanisms were the key to evolution were called neo-Lamarckians. They included the British botanist George Henslow (1835–1925), who studied
6882-483: The same venue in June ;2019. In 2019 the story was adapted into a folk opera performed at The Sydney Fringe Australia from a musical score and libretto composed by musician and librettist Freddie Hill in 1999. Charles Kingsley Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England , a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He
6975-488: The same. Zirkle pointed out that stories involving the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics appear numerous times in ancient mythology and the Bible and persisted through to Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories . The idea is mentioned in 18th century sources such as Diderot 's D'Alembert's Dream . Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia (c. 1795) suggested that warm-blooded animals develop from "one living filament... with
7068-433: The story. In the accompanying illustrations by Linley Sambourne , Huxley and Owen are caricatured, studying a captured water-baby. In 1892 Thomas Henry Huxley's five-year-old grandson Julian saw this engraving and wrote his grandfather a letter asking: Dear Grandpater – Have you seen a Waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Could I see it some day? – Your loving Julian. Huxley wrote back
7161-458: The tails off mice does not seem to meet the qualifications of disuse, but rather falls in a category of accidental misuse... Lamarck's hypothesis has never been proven experimentally and there is no known mechanism to support the idea that somatic change, however acquired, can in some way induce a change in the germplasm. On the other hand it is difficult to disprove Lamarck's idea experimentally, and it seems that Weismann's experiment fails to provide
7254-581: The tale to a newer age, with Tomi having been trafficked from Nigeria as a child labourer . In 2014 it was adapted into a musical; a shortened version premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014, with the full version being produced at the Playhouse Theatre, Cheltenham in 2015 by performing arts students of the University of Gloucestershire . It was performed, again by students, in
7347-436: The term "pan-environmentalism" for his evolutionary theory which he saw as a fusion of Darwinism with neo-Lamarckism. He held that heterochrony is a main mechanism for evolutionary change and that novelty in evolution can be generated by genetic assimilation . His views were criticized by Arthur M. Shapiro for providing no solid evidence for his theory. Shapiro noted that "Matsuda himself accepts too much at face value and
7440-448: The theory that what is inherited derives from the whole body of the parent, whereas Aristotle thought it impossible; but that all the same, Aristotle implicitly agreed to the inheritance of acquired characteristics, giving the example of the inheritance of a scar, or of blindness, though noting that children do not always resemble their parents. Zirkle recorded that Pliny the Elder thought much
7533-536: The time, he thought that changed habits produce an inherited effect, a concept now known as Lamarckism . In The Water-Babies , Kingsley tells of a group of humans called the Doasyoulikes who are allowed to do "whatever they like" and who gradually lose the power of speech, degenerate into gorillas and are shot by the African explorer du Chaillu . He refers to the movement to end slavery in mentioning that one of
7626-537: The town in which Westward Ho! is set, took its name from him after it was founded in 2009 as a merger of Edgehill College and Grenville College . In 1905, the composer Cyril Rootham wrote a musical setting of Kingsley's poem Andromeda . This was performed at the Bristol Music Festival in 1908. Like Kingsley, Rootham had been educated at Bristol Grammar School. Lamarckism Lamarckism , also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism ,
7719-554: The water as he did. – There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things. When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal seers, and see things more wonderful than the Water Babies where other folks can see nothing. Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let sewers run into the sea, instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty reasonable souls ; or throw herrings’ heads, and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse, into
7812-458: The water ; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore, there the water-babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or foul) : but leave the sea-anemones and the crabs to clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the water-babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor shells and sea-cucumbers and golden-combs, and make
7905-539: The wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what nature is, or what she can do ; and nobody knows ; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove." In his Origin of Species, Darwin mentions that, like many others at
7998-615: Was adapted into an animated film The Water Babies in 1978 starring James Mason , Bernard Cribbins and Billie Whitelaw . Though many of the main elements are there, the film's storyline differs substantially from the book's, with a new sub-plot involving Tom saving the Water-Babies from imprisonment by a kingdom of sharks. It was also adapted into a musical theatre version produced at the Garrick Theatre in London, in 1902. The adaptation
8091-583: Was described as a "fairy play", by Rutland Barrington , with music by Frederick Rosse , Albert Fox, and Alfred Cellier . The book was also produced as a play by Jason Carr and Gary Yershon , mounted at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2003, directed by Jeremy Sams , starring Louise Gold , Joe McGann , Katherine O'Shea, and Neil McDermott. The story was also adapted into a radio series featuring Timothy West , Julia McKenzie , and Oliver Peace as Tom. A 2013 update for BBC Radio 4 brought
8184-578: Was made a canon of Westminster Abbey . Kingsley sat on the 1866 Edward Eyre Defence Committee along with Thomas Carlyle , John Ruskin , Charles Dickens , John Tyndall , and Alfred Tennyson , where he supported Jamaican Governor Edward Eyre 's brutal suppression of the Morant Bay Rebellion against the Jamaica Committee . Kingsley was a friend and colleague of Charles Darwin . One of his daughters, Mary St Leger Kingsley, became known as
8277-425: Was necessary to cause variation in the hereditary material. The identification of Lamarckism with the inheritance of acquired characteristics is regarded by evolutionary biologists including Ghiselin as a falsified artifact of the subsequent history of evolutionary thought, repeated in textbooks without analysis, and wrongly contrasted with a falsified picture of Darwin's thinking. Ghiselin notes that "Darwin accepted
8370-581: Was neither the first nor the most distinguished biologist to believe in the inheritance of acquired characters. He merely endorsed a belief which had been generally accepted for at least 2,200 years before his time and used it to explain how evolution could have taken place. The inheritance of acquired characters had been accepted previously by Hippocrates , Aristotle , Galen , Roger Bacon , Jerome Cardan , Levinus Lemnius , John Ray , Michael Adanson , Jo. Fried. Blumenbach and Erasmus Darwin among others. Zirkle noted that Hippocrates described pangenesis ,
8463-475: Was sympathetic to the idea of evolution and was one of the first to welcome Charles Darwin 's book On the Origin of Species . He had been sent an advance review copy and in his response of 18 November 1859 (four days before the book went on sale) stated that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species." Darwin added an edited version of Kingsley's closing remarks to
8556-492: Was the father of the novelist Lucas Malet (Mary St. Leger Kingsley, 1852–1931) and the uncle of the traveller and scientist Mary Kingsley (1862–1900). Charles Kingsley's childhood was spent in Clovelly , Devon, where his father was curate in 1826–1832 and rector in 1832–1836, and at Barnack , Northamptonshire. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Helston Grammar School before studying at King's College London and
8649-487: Was to argue that the acquired traits were heritable. He gave as an imagined illustration the idea that when giraffes stretch their necks to reach leaves high in trees, they would strengthen and gradually lengthen their necks. These giraffes would then have offspring with slightly longer necks. In the same way, he argued, a blacksmith , through his work, strengthens the muscles in his arms, and thus his sons would have similar muscular development when they mature. Lamarck stated
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