Too good to be true.
I'm not much of a biologist, but I'm pretty sure that the Lamarckian concept of the
inheritance of acquired characteristics remained quite popular until the rediscovery
of Mendel's work. It was then, when scientists found a working explanation for
evolution, that there was simply no longer any reason to continue to try and explain
away the difficulties in Lamarck's ideas.
Unless, of course, you had Party backing. Even though it seems that nobody succeeded
in reproducing Lysenko's
crop-growth "results", and famines could be shown to be the direct result
of his theories being put into action, in the Soviet Union his theories continued to be accepted as
fact well into the 1960s.
It's a sobering story, and of the sort that generations later we can laugh at.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that "deep down", many of
us are disappointed that the inheritance of acquired characteristics isn't the
way that evolution works.
Go to: Holding on / Letting go.