A Professorial Slip-Up

What?!

Lamarck, Haeckel, and Darwin (a motley crew)

In Class Debacle

I think the professor was just using a bad example possibly due to lack of sleep. It sounds like he is supporting or making an argument for Lamarckism, which was rejected many years ago, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

Definitions

Let’s define what Lamarckism is by looking to a couple dictionary definitions:

Random House Dictionary

• the Lamarckian theory that characteristics acquired by habit, use, or disuse may be passed on to future generations through inheritance.

American Heritage Dictionary

• A theory of biological evolution holding that species evolve by the inheritance of traits acquired or modified through the use or disuse of body parts.

Simple enough. Now let’s throw in an encyclopedia definition:

Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution refers to the once widely accepted idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring (also known as based on heritability of acquired characteristics or "soft inheritance"). It is named for the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories and is often incorrectly cited as the founder of soft inheritance.

Wikipedia

I - again - extend the benefit of the doubt that the professor was just "thought tied" or tired from his teaching schedule when he mentioned what seems to be an outmoded theory. Now let’s watch some students interact with the professor and then the professor making his impossible claim. Take note the audio is horrible, turn down the volume a bit; and there is a small blank spot at the beginning of the clip:

Darwinian Evolution & Lamarckism

Charles Darwin added this Lamarckian theory to his sixth-edition of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (yes, Darwin was a racist) to make the argument for the Giraffe’s neck getting longer. I have debated this issue with evolutionary minded university students over the years, so when I heard the professor mention what can only be described as Lamarckism… well… I couldn’t resist.

Lamarck and Darwin

Once scientists began thinking about animals in terms of evolution, the giraffe became a welcome—and seemingly straightforward—example. It is as if the giraffe's long neck was begging to be explained by evolutionary theorists.

One of the first evolutionary thinkers, Jean-Baptist Lamarck, offered a short description of how the giraffe evolved in his major work, Philosophie Zoologique, which was published in 1809:

• It is interesting to observe the result of habit in the peculiar shape and size of the giraffe: this animal, the tallest of the mammals, is known to live in the interior of Africa in places where the soil is nearly always arid and barren, so that it is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and to make constant efforts to reach them. From this habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal's forelegs have become longer than its hind-legs, and that its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe, without standing up on its hind-legs, attains a height of six meters. (Quoted in Gould 2002, p. 188)

In Lamarck's view, we must imagine a situation in the past where the best food for browsing mammals was higher up in trees, the lower vegetation having been eaten by other animals. The ancestors of the giraffe—which we should imagine like antelopes or deer—needed to adapt their behavior to this changing environment. As Lamarck wrote, "variations in the environment induce changes in the needs, habits and modes of life of living beings ... these changes give rise to modifications or developments in their organs and the shape of their parts" (p. 179). So Lamarck imagined that over generations the habit of continually reaching for the higher browse produced in the giraffe's ancestors a lengthening of the legs and neck.

A little over sixty years later, Charles Darwin commented on giraffe evolution in the sixth edition (1872) of his seminal book, Origin of Species:

• The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, fore-legs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees. It can thus obtain food beyond the reach of the other Ungulata or hoofed animals inhabiting the same country; and this must be a great advantage to it during dearths.... So under nature with the nascent giraffe the individuals which were the highest browsers, and were able during dearth to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved; for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of food.... Those individuals which had some one part or several parts of their bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally have survived. These will have intercrossed and left offspring, either inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again in the same manner; whilst the individuals, less favoured in the same respects will have been the most liable to perish.... By this process long-continued, which exactly corresponds with what I have called unconscious selection by man, combined no doubt in a most important manner with the inherited effects of the increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain that an ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe. (Darwin 1872, pp. 177ff.)

In many respects this is a classic formulation of how Darwin viewed evolution: every species consists of individuals that show considerable variations. Under certain environmental conditions particular variations will be most advantageous. Natural selection weeds out the unadapted and the best-adapted survive. These variations become dominant in the species and so it evolves. In the case of giraffes, times of drought and arid conditions give an advantage to those animals that can out-compete others by reaching the higher, untouched leaves. They form the ancestral stock of the animals that evolve into giraffes.

Interestingly, Darwin believed in the "inherited effects of the increased use of parts"—a very "Larmarckian" view. Lamarck argued for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Darwin felt that this was key to explain giraffe evolution; otherwise there is no guarantee that longer features in one generation will have an effect on subsequent ones. But this view of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is rejected by mainstream Darwinists today.

Nature Institute

Lamarck Shown Wrong… Darwin Too?

How was this theory attributed to Lamarck finally disproved? Well, PETA would have been very upset about the methods used. A guy named after a month (August) started to cut off the tails of rats and breeding them and low-and-behold, every rat born to tailless rats had… can you guess… yup, tails.

The German biologist August Weismann… had shown that chopping off a rat's tail did not lead to the birth of tailless ratlets. Experimental protocols have gotten more sophisticated since then, but the verdict is the same: There's no sign of Lamarckian inheritance anywhere in the kingdoms of life.

American Scientist

This is key:

The genetic variance is already present in the parent population, then, through environmental changes one aspect of the species is isolated (like a drought, cold, heat, rainy season, and the like). So the environment didn’t make peoples skin light or dark, that aspect or variation was already in the parent population’s gene pool. The lighter skinned people did well in colder climates and didn’t get burned easily or get skin cancer. The darker skinned persons in colder/less sunny areas tended to get rickets and osteoarthritis due to the lack of sun/vitamin-D (which is why we fortify milk and other products with it in order keep instances of the above from happening). They did much better around the equator. The DNA didn’t change because of the environment or outside forces. The population – parent population – already had the variances in them; they were just isolated from the parent population.

Let’s take resistance to antibiotics as another example:

Bacterium & Evolution II

This is part II of a debate I had

Before we start, let me post this small clip for clarification:

• It has been proven that resistance to many modern antibiotics was present decades before their [the antibiotics] discovery. In 1845, sailors on an ill-fated Arctic expedition were buried in the permafrost and remained deeply frozen until their bodies were exhumed in 1986. Preservation was so complete that six strains of nineteenth-century bacteria found dormant in the contents of the sailors' intestines were able to be revived! When tested, these bacteria were found to possess resistance to several modern-day antibiotics, including penicillin. Such traits were obviously present prior to penicillin's discovery, and thus could not be an evolutionary development. (Medical Tribune, December 29, 1988, p. 1, 23.)

In 1998, the National Academy of Sciences published and distributed a book to public schools and other institutions entitled Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M., wrote a book, Refuting Evolution, which is a topic by topic rebuttal to this Academy of Sciences publication. Under the evidence for evolution in the evolutionist text is the following quote:

• The continual evolution of human pathogens has come to pose one of the most serious health problems facing human societies. Many strains of bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics as natural selection has amplified resistant strains that arose through naturally occurring genetic variation. Similar episodes of rapid evolution are occurring in many different organisms. Rats have developed resistance to the poison warfain. Many hundreds of insect species and other agricultural pests have evolved resistance to the pesticides used to combat them – even to chemical defenses genetically engineered into plants.

(Sarfati’s reply – any words in the [boxes] are mine):

• However, what has this to do with the evolution of new kinds with new genetic information? Precisely nothing. What has happened in many cases is that some bacteria already had the genes for resistance to the antibiotics. In fact, some bacteria obtained by thawing sources which had been frozen before man developed antibiotics have shown to be antibiotic-resistant [6 different antibiotics in fact, penicillin in modern doses – which is way beyond the strength of natural penicillin found in nature]. When antibiotics are applied to a population of bacteria, those lacking resistance are killed, and any genetic information they carry is eliminated. The survivors carry less information [or specificity], but they are all resistant. The same principle applies to rats and insects “evolving” resistance to pesticides. Again, the resistance was already there, and creatures without resistance are eliminated.

[Much like if we killed all dogs (including Canis Domesticus and Canis Lupus) except for Chihuahuas, we would permanently lose the information of the parent population. You could then breed Chihuahuas for a millennium and not get an Irish Wolfhound]

• …In other cases, antibiotic resistance is the result of a mutation, but in all known cases, this mutation has destroyed information. It may seem surprising that destruction of information can sometimes help. But one example is resistance to the antibiotic penicillin. Bacteria normally produce an enzyme, penicillinase, which destroys penicillin. The amount of penicillinase is controlled by a gene. There is normally enough produced to handle any penicillin encountered in the wild, but the bacterium is overwhelmed by the amount given to patients. A mutation disabling this controlling gene results in much more penicillinase being produced.

[Thus, the bacteria found frozen in 1845 already had the mutation to overcome modern medical doses of penicillin. So the mutation wasn’t the result of the penicillin in modern doses, thus seemingly becoming resistant… it already had the resistant mutation – informational or specificity losing – in the population. In other words, no new information was added to the parent population!]

• …This enables the bacterium to resist the antibiotics but normally, this mutant would be less fit, as it wastes resources by producing unnecessary penicillinase. Another example of acquired antibiotic resistance is the transfer of pieces of genetic material (called Plasmids) between bacteria, even between those of different species. But this is still using pre-existing information, and doesn’t explain its origin.

No new genetic information was added to the person's DNA, in fact -- if anything -- the person lost some specificity of coding in the process. Lamarckism and Darwinian evolution demand that there be an increase in genetic material as well as an increased ordering of this new material. Which may explain why such an ardent evolutionist like Richard Dawkins rejects Lamarckian theory as well as Darwin's use of it in his "special theory":

"That difficulty arose from current views of the nature of heredity. In the 19th century it was almost universally assumed that heredity was a blending process. On this blending inheritance theory, not only are offspring intermediate between their two parents in character and appearance, but the hereditary factors that they pass on to their own children are themselves inextricably merged. It can be shown that, if heredity is of this blending type, it is almost impossible for Darwinian natural selection to work because the available variation is halved in every generation. Darwin knew this, and it worried him enough to drive him in the direction of Lamarckism."

My Gene’s Made Me Do It

What is really happening with micro-evolution is the following. Using a “bear” graphic we can see that genes make up whether the bears have short, medium, or long hair. As these bears wonder into climates that change with the seasons, the short-haired bears may not survive a freezing winter. Similarly, the same goes for wolves, the short-haired Canis Lupus (wolf) died out in Alaska eons ago. Now, if a tribe of people only chewed on bones and gristle, the people with healthy choppers and strong muscular jowls will survive better than the person’s without, and these smaller jawed people may die out. Typically now, the parent information is in the gene pool of the offshoot of “species.” So if the environment changes back (thinking here of the Galápagos Island finches here), or their diet changes (Dr. Whatley's example), some smaller/weaker jawed persons are born and they will survive alongside their larger jawed cousins.

See below an old response to a skeptic many years ago:

Species & Speciation

Species is not well defined. Example: Canis Domesticus (say, a, German Shepherd) and Canis Lupus (wolf) are classified as two separate species. But they can interbreed (i.e. a Wolf and a German Shepherd). But a Chihuahua and a Great Dane cannot breed, but they are both Canis Domesticus (the same species). The arctic hair cannot breed with the Florida hair, but both breed with the Dakota hair. Evolutionists recognize certain bowerbirds as distinct species even though they often interbreed.

Or consider the case of two different kinds of squirrels separated by the Grand Canyon. The Kaibab squirrel inhabits the north side of the canyon, while the Abert squirrel inhabits the south side. It seems evident the two descended from one original population. Rarely, however, can squirrels from both populations come together, and thus there is no interbreeding between them. And, for some time biologists have disagreed as to whether the squirrels had reached the level of two separate species.

Look, you could go to Galapagos Islands and get a pair of finches and bring them back to a laboratory and just let them have sex. After a few generations you will have small beaked, medium beaked, large beaked finches. The information is already in there genome, nothing new was created, specificity was lost if anything. Now if you simulate a drought, like on Galapagos, so that the seeds become hard and more beak strength is needed to open them, then of course the larger beaked finch will survive. A creationist came up with the survival of the fittest twenty-four years prior to Darwin. After all the other “parent” finches die off, you are left with only large beaked finches in the laboratory. This is not evolution; no new information was gained in the process. There are limits to its change, strep-throat may change into a flesh eating virus, but it loss specificity to get to that point or already had the information in its genome. It’s still strep-throat.

That finch didn’t turn into a dinosaur; that dog didn’t turn into a cat; that ape didn’t turn into a man, etc.. The genetic barriers wont and don’t allow it. You can post all the sites in the world, but you will never be able to find one proof of macroevolution in the fossil record or in the living world. All we have ever seen is what evolutionists’ call “subspeciation” (variation within a type), never “transpeciation” (change from one type to others). The primrose is a prime example of my point. The alleged new species of primrose that de Vries thought he had “discovered” were not new species at all but rather mere variations of the same species.

This “sport” (a certain primrose that de Vries created), with it’s doubled chromosome [no new information was added, it merely doubled the information that was already there], is still a primrose. Stickleback fish may diversify into fresh-water dwellers and salt–water dwellers, but both remain sticklebacks. One fruit fly may breed on apple trees and another on hawthorn trees, but both remain fruit flies. Speciation is a means of creating diversity within types of living things, but macroevolution is much more than diversity.

Macroevolution requires an increase of the gene pool, the addition of new genetic information, whereas the means to speciation discussed above represent the loss of genetic information (how so?). Both physical and ecological isolation produce varieties by cutting a small population off from its parent population and building a new group from the more limited genetic information contained in the small population. A large population carries genetic reserve, a wealth of concealed recessive genes. In a small group cut off from the parent population, some of these recessive traits may be expressed more often. This makes for interesting diversity, but it should not blind us to the fact that the total genetic variability in the small group is reduced!

The appearance of reproductively isolated populations represents microevolution, not macro-evolution. Vertical change – to a new level of complexity – requires the input of additional genetic information. Can that information – the ensembles of new genes to make wrens, rabbits, and Hawthorne trees be gleaned from random mutations?

Thus far, there appears to be good evidence that the roles mutations are able to play are severely restricted by and within the existing higher-level blueprint of the organism’s whole genome.

To go from one-celled organisms to a human being means that information must be added to the genetic messages at each step of the way. Mechanisms for the loss of genetic information cannot be used as support for a theory requiring vast increases of genetic information.

Speciation is actually akin to what breeders do. They isolate a small group of plants or animals and force them to interbreed, cutting them off from the larger gene pool to which they belong. A century of breeding testifies to the fact that this produces limited change only. It does produce the open-ended change required by Darwinian evolution. Some think, as do I, that the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred because they didn’t have the genetic diversity to adapt to environmental changes.