Moreno Juan
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC.
Asclepio. 2009;61(2):233-48. doi: 10.3989/asclepio.2009.v61.i2.291.
Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and immediate responses to environmental challenges has offered a promise of protagonism of human beings and their fellow travellers, the other organisms, in the evolutionary process. Darwin's theory about evolution by natural selection does not offer this consolation and does not presuppose anything else other than gradual changes in the composition of natural populations. The study of ecology, ethology, neurobiology, animal culture, psychology and human history reveals that the lamarckian interpretations of change and character transmission processes always assume what they intend to explain, that is previous processes of darwinian evolution that guarantee the adaptive nature of the observed responses. The permanent search of direction and intentionality in evolutionary processes by many scientists suggests the limited acceptance of materialistic explanations as those offered by Darwin's theory.
拉马克的获得性特征遗传理论以及对环境挑战的即时反应理论，为人类及其同伴——其他生物在进化过程中成为主角带来了希望。达尔文的自然选择进化论并没有提供这种慰藉，除了自然种群组成的逐渐变化之外，没有预设任何其他东西。对生态学、动物行为学、神经生物学、动物文化、心理学和人类历史的研究表明，拉马克式对变化和性状传递过程的解释总是假定了它们想要解释的东西，即先前的达尔文进化过程，这些过程保证了所观察到的反应的适应性。许多科学家对进化过程中方向和意向性的不断探索，表明他们对达尔文理论所提供的唯物主义解释的接受程度有限。
