Lysenko did not actually believe that inheritance of
acquired characteristics occurred in humans.
Many scientists believed that "life really was something that acted through the medium of matter but was independent of it." (6) And he had a thoroughly scientific explanation for that vital force: the inheritance of
acquired characteristics. This theory, popularly associated with Jean Baptiste Lamarck, explained evolutionary change as a result of the biological passing on of the experience or change of an individual.
21) and what seems to be a sort of Lamarckian view on the author's part on the inheritance of
acquired characteristics (p.
The 21 activities cover taxonomy, nature studies, and
acquired characteristics. Readers are also instructed in baking Shrewsbury cares from an authentic 1808 recipe, studying Greek and Latin vocabulary, going on a botanical treasure hunt in the grocery store, tying knots, cooking a Chilean dish of beans and tomatoes, keeping a journal, and making fossils.
Acquiring Genomes argues against the orthodox history of science today: Margulis contends that Lamarck, who claimed that organisms inherit
acquired characteristics, was right.
It is this that permits the inheritance of
acquired characteristics of a certain sort--of learning, through communication from one human being to another.
The language of 'blood' in Beer-Hofmann's Der Tod Georgs is related to the conflict between August Weismann's theory of the unchangeable germplasm and the neo-Lamarckian view that
acquired characteristics could be inherited (which implied that racial 'degeneration' could be reversed, Jews assimilated to Gentile society, and human character modified by social reforms).
The discovery bears a spooky parallel to the discredited ideas of 19th-century biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who argued that species inherit
acquired characteristics. For example, Agrawal says, "if I'm a bodybuilder, my babies will have big muscles." Lamarck didn't know about genes, but people interpret his idea as implying genetic change.
Like most biologists of his time, he rejected Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of
acquired characteristics, but he had nothing to put in its place.
