SchiZe

. . . and if there was ever a scientist whose legacy was tarnished by bad timing, it was Jean Baptiste Lamarck. The French naturalist lived from 1744 to 1829 - and published his own evolutionary theory decades before Darwin's theory went public in 1859.

In the popular imagination, those who've heard of Lamarck tend to associate him with a wrongheaded version of evolution in which giraffes can grant their offspring longer necks by reaching for high leaves. . .

. . . flatworms were exposed to viruses; they mounted a defensive mechanism, and then passed that immunity down through several generations of offspring. . .

. . . Lamarck was not so wrong to have assumed nurture could be passed down as nature. But his name should be remembered for the idea he got right - the birth of new species through evolution.

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