Lamarckism
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Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use o
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck repeated the ancient folk wisdom of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
The long neck of the giraffe is often used as an example in popular explanations of Lamarckism. However, this was only a small part of his theory of evolution towards "perfection"; it was a hypothetical illustration; and he used it to discuss his theory of heredity, not evolution.
Edward Drinker Cope
Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard tried to demonstrate Lamarckism by mutilating guinea pigs.
Herbert Spencer
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Herbert Spencer was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined
Lamarckism
…philosophically superior to Darwin's mechanism of random variation acted on by selective pressures. Lamarckism also appealed to those, like 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…
Spencer at the age of 73
Spencer as a young man
Spencer's tomb, in Highgate Cemetery, north London
Portrait of Spencer by John Bagnold Burgess, 1871–72