Was Lamarck right?

The actual Lamarckism had two forces: 1. An intrinsic force which tended to increase the complexity of body plans "upward", and 2. The diversification of these increasingly complex body plans by the inheritance of aquired characteristics and the principle of use and disuse.The first force isn't really discussed much in regular biology for some reason. But just going by the second force, I still don't think it's time to apologize to Larmack. The large majority of his explanations stressed the principle of use and disuse.If we are just to go by "the inheritance of aquired characteristics", then Lamarck was right in the sense that this happens. As Mammuthus said, basically anything that affects your germ line will be considered the inheritance of aquired characteristics (if the genome is included). But I don't think it can be considered the major, or even a major, driving force of evolution as Lamarck had in mind.[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 03-01-2004]

I think the essay you are thinking of is "A Tree Grows in Paris: Larmarck's Division of Worms and Revision of Nature", it's found in his book The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History.