Why is Jean Baptiste Lemark important?

Answer 1

Because he actually beat Darwin to the punch when it comes to the concept of evolution. After Napoleon meet his Waterloo and the church was back in power in France, Lemark was branded a heretic and his 'discovery' went the way of the dinosaur until it was resurrected and finally brought to light by a man with the last name of Wallace. Wallace passed it on to Darwin who had been working on his own idea of the origin of species. However, they differed in that according to Lemark, evolution was not the result of a random 'accident' but rather a very purposeful and organized plan by the Universe itself. In some instances, evolution took place over a much shorter period of time than Darwin had thought. Based upon the success of the mutation in its ability to survive and find its niche, some species evolved over thousands instead of millions of years. The grand conclusion is that we as a species have a great bit more control over our lives including our genetic make up and supposed predisposition to our inherited traits than DNA strands would have you believe. Much can be controlled by our environment, including the energy of our thoughts that have an effect on the cell membranes as opposed to the nucleus The membrane is the environment, which in experiments, survived the destruction of the nucleus.