Was Lamarck right?

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a wonderful little essay on Lamarck. I was just in the library but couldn't find it, so I can't provide a reference. It is in one of the later books - in the later books I didn't find Gould's writing so interesting, but this particular essay was a gem.Evidently, Lamarck has been unfairly maligned. Toward the end of his life, he began to realise that his evolutionary theory was inadequate to explain the real data, and he began to modify it somewhat. He ended up a bit closer to modern Darwinian theory (although not quite there). Gould held him up as an example what what scientists are supposed to do: despite the heavy emotional investment he had in his theory, he was willing to reconsider it, modify it, and even abandon large sections of it as the data warrants.

There is a myth that "Lamarckism" was all about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. As you point out, AbbyLeever, Darwin also wrote about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. They didn't have modern genetics back then, so Darwin (and every other evolutionist) had to explain where new variations came from. The theory of pangenesis was the best that they had, at the time.I don't quite understand Lamarkism, so what I am about to say may be wrong; I am always open to correction. What distinguished Lamarkism as a theory of evolution was that Lamark believed that there was an inherent force that caused species to progress; there was a philosophical belief at the time that civilization was one of improvement and progress (with the positive connotations of the word), and that progress was a natural part of the world. Lamark assumed that it applied to biological evolution, as well.Darwin, of course, denied that there was any progress, except by accident. All that existed was variation with natural selection picking out those better able to procreate.I also seem to recall that Lamark believed that each species was part of a unique evolutionary line, or at least there were a lot of lineages, whereas Darwin put forth the hypothesis that all species evolved from a very small number of ancestors.Edited to add:
I am an idiot. Right after hitting "submit" it occurred to me to google! Here is some information on Lamark. If I am reading the article correctly (and I may be reading my views into it), then Lamark believed that species evolved because all the members were acquiring the same characteristics, while Darwin thought that those who did not acquire the right characteristics were eliminated by natural selection.[This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 03-18-2004]

That was one of the books I was looking through, looking for the essay. I completely missed it!Thanks, Justin.