Talk:Lamarckism

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Epigenetics should not be confused with Lamarckism

I have three papers that describe that here [1], [2] and [3] to be added to the article shortly. A little angry (talk) 00:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Giraffe diagram

A diagram of a Giraffe was added to this article but this is somebodies own diagram and misrepresentation of Lamarckism, not from a scientific source.

Michael Ghiselin covers the giraffe fallacy here [4], the text that was on the diagram was entirely inaccurate to what Lamarckism actually says. So I removed it. TreeTrailer (talk) 03:38, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Stimulated copy number variation is arguably a form of Lamarckism

A recent article describes a mechanism by which environmental changes cause an organism (yeast in this case) to its DNA. Hull, Ryan M.; Cruz, Cristina; Jack, Carmen V.; Houseley, Jonathan (27 June 2017). "Environmental change drives accelerated adaptation through stimulated copy number variation". PLOS Biology. 15 (6): e2001333. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2001333.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link): "... we directly demonstrate that Copy Number Variation of the copper-resistance gene CUP1 is stimulated by environmental copper.".

This article doesn't mention Lamarckism and this Wikipedia article doesn't mention "copy number variation". It seems to me that this is a clear instance of Lamarckism. I have not added a section regarding this because I do not yet know of a peer-reviewed journal article making the link.

Robin Whittle (talk) 03:44, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't sound like Lamarckism exactly. It's not far from ordinary gene regulation with the twist of varying number of copies, obviously a surprising thing to do. Without a source that asserts Lamarckism it cannot be added to the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:27, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Astronaut's DNA changed

I don't know if this is relevant here, but Lamarckism popped-up in my mind while reading this: Astronaut's DNA no longer matches that of his identical twin, NASA finds. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:10, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Mutation. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:18, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Lamarckism#Experiments

Is it useful to list every single experiment that was claimed to support Lamarckism? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:38, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, firstly, this is only a small list of the better-known experiments. Secondly, the claims – and their refutations – are relevant because they are the factual basis for the debate and indeed the continuing interest in neo-Lamarckism. However, I can't see any value in reporting that people wrote books on the subject; we should use their opinions and let the citations do the talking. By the same token, I see no value in trying to maintain a bibliography that we don't use anywhere in the article and that will never be complete, we're not a directory. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:29, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Mateusz Konieczny: Some serious reorganization; summarized key experiments in tables, lost a lot of repetition. Hope that solves the problem for you. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:38, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap Thanks! Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 10:38, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Lamarckism is obsolete

Lamarckism is obsolete. There is no known possible mechanism for how it could occur and no repeatable experimental evidence that supports it. I think it should be included in the "Obsolete biological theories" category. I know there has been some hype about 'epigenetics' reviving Lamarckism but this is inaccurate, they are entirely unrelated. Any thoughts? Skeptic from Britain (talk) 19:17, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, OK if it makes you happy. I'd point to the historical importance in the evolution of evolutionary thought. Moreover, examples keep cropping up of mechanisms that - to be sure - aren't classical Lamarckism but still fire people up because of obvious similar flavours, and this keeps the topic current after a fashion. Furthermore, "obsolete theory" connotes something of more modest scope to me. Perhaps all religion should be relegated to the "obsolete ideas about life, the universe, and everything" category, and I would not disagree with anyone who would propose that, but I would also recognise that going to war with an awful lot of people over a mere label is not worth it. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:DC07:168A:B2A3:677C (talk) 08:43, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

"Textbooks are wrong" "Soft Evolution"

We follow rather than lead the textbooks here on the encyclopedia. Like it or not, Lamarckism has come to mean what it has come to mean. Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and anarchists all feel your pain. However, we are not doing our job if we force the lead to take a side in the debate rather than inform the general reader what the term has come to mean. Lamarck has his own page where you can mount a defense all day long. This page currently suffers from WP:UNDUE from Gould and Ghiselen. And the page is trying to do three opposing things 1) defend Lamarck, 2)defend soft evolution 3)question soft evolution. In shorthand, a neutral description would go like this, "Lamarckism has come to mean "inheritance of behaviorally acquired traits (or however it's properly cashed out)" it is named after Lamarck with the following caveats (other people had this idea, it was a small part of his work), and the idea of inheritance of acquired traits has been disputed and supported in the following ways...." What's more, I don't know if "soft evolution" is sufficiently backed up by WP:RS. DolyaIskrina (talk) 00:48, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, DolyaIskrina, you know that I always greatly respect and value your opinions on articles as incisive and well-thought out, and I'm grateful for the attention you've given this article. You have made multiple points and I'll reply to each of them now. Firstly, we obviously agree that articles must be neutral, and the places where you've noticed this one looking non-neutral must clearly be fixed at once - they will be, today. I note in passing that this actually affects only a small part of the article, as the historical facts and suggested mechanisms (whether they occur in nature or not) are reliably cited. Next, if the article is trying to do multiple opposing things, it at least cannot be accused of partisanship – it is neither in favour ( your #2), nor (your #3) against it; but clearly it is presenting the case for both sides a bit too strongly, and if it also seems (your #1) to be defending Lamarck, both things must be remedied. Then, both Gould and Ghiselen are well-respected biologists, and using Ghiselen's blog is easily justified under Wiki-policy. Further, their view is supported by the existing quotation and citation of Conway Zirkle, a well-known botanist, so there are already multiple reliable sources on the matter in the article. On your edit comment about secondary sources, I see the textbook accounts of Lamarck, Darwin, and Weismann as primary sources; Gauthier, Ghiselin, and Zirkle commenting on those as secondary. If you mean that debate among secondary commentators counts as primary, we would face an infinite regress! But there's really no sign of an opposing side: nobody has replied to claim that Lamarck actually was a textbook Lamarckist, and the primary facts wouldn't support that anyway. There is a further issue about sources of the kind you seem to be hoping for: biologists are keen to propose theories (like the Hologenome one in the article), and other biologists are keen to rebut those (like Steele's); but they (and the journals in which they publish) are not much interested in rebutting wrong or garbled takes on the history of biology found in introductory textbooks, so if they mention such things at all, it is usually in essays (as Gould) or blogs (as Ghiselin) - Zirkle was unusual among biologists in writing a paper for a philosophical journal; we are unlikely to get better sources. The best we can do is to be neutral ourselves and to introduce these commentators neutrally - I'll have another go at that. I'm not sure what you may mean by "soft evolution", but since that must include all the 'Mechanisms resembling Lamarckism' including epigenetics, the hologenome, and the Baldwin effect, there is a mass of evidence available; and even where mechanisms such as Steele's appear wrong to biologists, they are relevant here. This has been a long reply, but I hope clear and to the point. I believe the article is sound and the facts well-established; I will work on the tone and balance now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:34, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Chiswick Chap. I'm a fan of yours as well. Sorry my previous post was a little rambling and sloppy. I haven't had a chance to look at your recent edits, but I wanted to clarify one of my many points above. I meant to write soft inheritance which was coined by Ernst Mayr, but I don't know if it's actually caught on, and if not probably shouldn't be in the lead. DolyaIskrina (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

No problem. It's one of several common synonyms. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: Your edits look good to me. As to the issue of how well and quickly the professionals correct textbooks, I see your point, but happily due to your edits I don't think we need to figure that out today. But my concern remains. I'm not sure that "soft inheritance" is supported by the sources as a synonym for Lamarckism. There is a linguistic fog between "Inherited epigenetic variation" "soft inheritance" and Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. (BTW: is there any kind of inheritance besides transgenerational? Do they really mean multitransgenerational? Oy biologists and words) My proposed fix would be to make this a page about the outdated term "Lamarckism" that was more or less wrongly attributed to "Jean-Baptiste Lamarck", and then point readers to [Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance]] for the modern understanding and recent research. And again I think we should lose references to "soft inheritance" in the lead of this page. But I could be wrong. I haven't read the hard copy sources on this page. DolyaIskrina (talk) 02:33, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

In that case we need to undo the redirect of Soft inheritance to here ... and write a new article on that subject. The transgenerational epigenetic thing is one instance of soft inheritance, not the only one. "Lamarckism" touches on soft inheritance and in the popular imagination proposes another mechanism for it. So there is scope for a new article; but disentangling the threads will not be easy as they are tightly interwoven; the epigenetic section of the article, for example, uses sources that freely call what they are talking about "Lamarckism". Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:54, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Lede image

This article needs an explanatory supporting image in the lede. Much use of Wikipedia never gets beyond the first few sentences and we need to convey the gist of an article as much to the casual reader as those who want an in depth view. Lumos3 (talk) 10:22, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps, but that applies to hundreds of thousands of articles; and what image would summarize this article correctly, I wonder? It certainly must not be a facile suggestion of high-school "Lamarckism" which as far as biology is concerned, isn't even wrong, and it was a view held by everyone from Aristotle to Darwin, with the exception, basically, of Lamarck. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:41, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Having slept on it, I've had a go at an image which is at least based on something Lamarck actually did say. Perhaps it will serve the purpose. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:21, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Important discoveries in debate about theory of evolution in neo-Lamarckism vs. Darwinian natural selectionism ("Darwinism")

Some important scientists and researchers have came out in the field of genetics claiming to prove that the natural selection theory in Darwinism is highly flawed in areas where Lamarckian genetics has now been proven right. Would be important to mention and elaborate upon. Also the obvious connection to theories of eugenics coming from somewhere in this area of thought here rather than classical social darwinism often considered bunk science today by many as an explanation of eugenics. Seems like there needs to be a great expansion in this article highlighting the new modern understanding of neo-Lamarckism as highly biologically tenable with much scientific insight discovered greatly improving upon the theory of evolution for instance in the broader understanding of the scientific community, rather than mostly emphasizing claims throughout this article about how people couldn't prove or disprove the theory or aren't sure if evidence was valid or not in the distant past rather the present day understandings. Recent new discoveries mentioned need to be taught if they are relevant and useful for greatly improving the quality of the article beyond just a "good article". Some editing users seemed apprehensive about adding things because they are either "not useful" or "irrelevant" but it seems there's no real argument to base the accusation in. 184.71.97.170 (talk) 20:08, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, @184.71.97.170: but the reversion is not "vandalism". You need to seek consensus before changing the article. That's part of WP:BRD. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 20:16, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

WP:NPOV issue matter right now then. How is what Chiswick Chap did not both arbitrary and contentious (WP:POV)? How is what you're doing defending him as not potentially doing something malicious not a fallacious argument (WP:POV)? You two are completely side-stepping the main point of the argument and refuse to address it. That's failure to engage in WP:BRD. If it's not vandalism you would join the actual dialectical discussion instead of making accusations and defending Chiswick Chap's arbitrary edit he can't sufficiently explain as of the current moment for you (WP:POV). His edit suggested maliciousness in the trolling tone of his RV edit comment about how my edit was "useless" especially with his sarcastic "thanks" (WP:POV). TLDR it's an important issue matter of WP:NPOV here for me. He sounded like a vandal troll seemingly trying to start an edit war which is explictly against protocol whereas WP:BRD is never absolutely necessary and merely optional but is often cited hypocritically by those that defend pointless edit warring. Don't forget WP:BRR, you're missing out on a big part of the editorial process here. Peep the last part of WP:BRD you're also ignoring, besides D being ignored only by asking me to gain consensus ALONE, it's just trying to talk down about making a bold edit despite citing WP:BRD. The last guideline rule of WP:BRD is this that you need to engage in with me: (Bold again) "Let the other editor apply agreed-upon changes. If they don't want to, that's okay, but be sure to offer. The offer alone shows deference and respect. If that editor accepts, (1) the history will show who made the change and the other editor will have control over the precise wording (keeping you from applying a change different from the one agreed upon). And, (2) such a practice prevents you from falling afoul of the three-revert rule. Assume this revision will not be the final version. You do not have to get it all done in one edit. If you can find consensus on some parts, make those changes, and let them settle. This will give everyone a new point to build from. Having completed one successful cycle, you may also find it easier to get traction for further changes, or you may find you have reached a reasonable compromise and can stop." 184.71.97.170 (talk) 20:41, 1 August 2022 (UTC)