The conflicting evolutionary theories of Darwin and Lamarck
Over the years, philosophers, religious thinkers and scientists have tried to explain the history of life on Earth. Throughout the years there has been many theories on the history of the Earth, many people believe that God created every organism on the Earth more or less how it is now. As the interest in fossils and natural history arose the beginning of a modern theory began to take shape. Early evolutionary theorists suggested that all life on Earth gradually evolved over time from simple organisms. However, their knowledge of science was incomplete and their theories left too many unanswered questions.
In the early 19th century, Lamarck proposed the theory of transformism. By examining fossils he learned that some species had remained the same over the thousands of years while others had changed. Lamarck suggested that, once nature formed life, the arrangement of all forms of life was the result of time and environment interacting with the organization of organic beings.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) at age 7. The painting ...
Charles Darwin, photographed by Julia Margaret Cam...
Charles Darwin as a young man, probably subsequent...From the simplest forms of life, more complicated forms emerged naturally, he suggested that animals climb higher and higher up the ladder of evolution because they want to improve more and more. His scientific theories were greatly ignored and attacked during his lifetime because of the lack of evidence to back up his theory. Lamarck knew that gradual changes lead to better adaptations to the environment, but he didn't know what mechanism was behind this.
During the mid-19th century, a man called Charles Darwin came up with a modern theory of life as a process of natural selection. He suggested that life is a competitive struggle to survive, that living things must compete for food and space. Darwin put forwards that, within a given population in a given environment, certain individuals...