Historical Influences on Darwin
There is no doubt that Charles Darwin paved the way and brought us to where we are today with Natural Selection and evolution. Although Darwin is the leading man in natural selection, I believe that Jean-Baptiste Lamark is not far behind him. Lamark was the first man who actually attempted to explain the evolutionary process. His theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics explained that based upon the use of certain traits, these traits would change, disappear and/or be passed on to their offspring. Although his theory proved to be wrong, he really set a tone for the importance of interactions between organisms and the external environment in the evolutionary process.
The essence of natural selection is really if the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different. Lamark represented his theory by using giraffes. He stated that short necked giraffes needed to reach for food, therefor causing their necks to grow longer. The Darwin-Wallace theory, proving to be correct, states that there is a variation in neck lengths, and a longer neck will be an advantage for feeding, and will be passes on to a greater number of offspring. Even though Lamark was wrong and to this day receives backlash, he really deserves some credit in paving the way for Darwin to develop his theory.
Clearly, the attitude and opinion from the church was highly negative. Going against the idea that everything was created by God, as Darwin went against it, was purely blasphemy. I'm sure that this urged him to publish his book, but I feel there was a greater influence. Wallace, i feel, was a greater influence is pushing him to publish his book. Darwin feared that Wallace would receive all of the credit for his book, therefore aiding him to publish On the Origin of Species.
~ Danielle Finn
