Gayon, Jean (Author)
Burian, Richard M. (Author)
Loison, Laurent (Author)
This article shows how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells. Félix d’Hérelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage and Jules Bordet applied it to develop an account of bacteriophagy as a transmissible form of autolysis and to analyze the new phenomenon of lysogeny. In a long-standing controversy with Bordet, Eugène Wollman deployed a more morphological understanding of the inheritance of acquired characters, yielding a particulate, but still Lamarckian, account of lysogeny. We then turn to André Lwoff who, with several colleagues, completed Wollman’s research program from 1949 to 1953. We examine how he gradually set aside the Lamarckian background, finally removing inheritance of acquired characters from the resulting account of bacteriophagy and lysogeny. In the conclusion, we emphasize the complex dual role of Lamarckism as it moved from an assumed explanatory framework to a challenge that the nascent molecular biology had to overcome.
...More
Chapter
Jablonka, Eva;
(2011)
Lamarckian Problematics in Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB001500093/)
Book
Tudge, Colin;
(2001)
Impact of the Gene: From Mendel's Peas to Designer Babies
(/isis/citation/CBB000102136/)
Article
Poreau, Brice;
(2011)
Commensalisme, mutualisme, parasitisme, une preuve de l'Evolution pour Etienne Rabaud?
(/isis/citation/CBB001220813/)
Article
Loison, Laurent;
(2011)
French Roots of French Neo-Lamarckisms, 1879--1985
(/isis/citation/CBB001220959/)
Book
Brzezinski Prestes, Maria Elice;
Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira;
Stefano, Waldir;
(2006)
Filosofia e História da Biologia 1
(/isis/citation/CBB000820181/)
Book
Schwartz, James;
(2008)
In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA
(/isis/citation/CBB000774889/)
Chapter
Gissis, Snait B.;
Jablonka, Eva;
(2011)
The Exclusion of Soft (“Lamarckian”) Inheritance from the Modern Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001500089/)
Chapter
Loison, Laurent;
(2011)
The Notions of Plasticity and Heredity among French Neo-Lamarckians (1880--1940): From Complementarity to Incompatibility
(/isis/citation/CBB001500086/)
Chapter
Wilkins, Adam;
(2011)
Why Did the Modern Synthesis Give Short Shrift to “Soft Inheritance”?
(/isis/citation/CBB001500092/)
Article
Serpa, Octavio Domont de, Jr.;
(2010)
O degenerado
(/isis/citation/CBB001420500/)
Article
John Lidwell-Durnin;
(2020)
William Benjamin Carpenter and the Emerging Science of Heredity
(/isis/citation/CBB587683100/)
Article
Hall, Brian K.;
(2006)
“Evolutionist and Missionary,” the Reverend John Thomas Gulick (1832--1923). Part I: Cumulative Segregation---Geographical Isolation
(/isis/citation/CBB001230142/)
Article
Snait B. Gissis;
(2023)
The Neo-Lamarckian Tools Deployed by the Young Durkheim: 1882–1892
(/isis/citation/CBB708515471/)
Article
Neill, Anna;
(2014)
The Machinate Literary Animal: Butlerian Science for the Twenty-First Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001450146/)
Book
Phillip R. Sloan;
Gerald P. McKenny;
Kathleen Eggleson;
(2015)
Darwin in the Twenty-first Century: Nature, Humanity, and God
(/isis/citation/CBB673217105/)
Article
Hall, Brian K.;
(2006)
“Evolutionist and Missionary,” the Reverend John Thomas Gulick (1832--1923). Part II. Coincident or Ontogenetic Selection---The Baldwin Effect
(/isis/citation/CBB001230143/)
Chapter
Ricqlès, Armand de;
(2010)
Une brève histoire de l'évolutionnisme
(/isis/citation/CBB001024542/)
Book
Loison, Laurent;
Morange, Michel;
(2010)
Qu'est-ce que le néolamarckisme? Les biologistes français et la question de l'évolution des espèces: 1870--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001231944/)
Article
Towheed, Shafquat;
(2006)
The Creative Evolution of Scientific Paradigms: Vernon Lee and the Debate over the Hereditary Transmission of Acquired Characters
(/isis/citation/CBB001030106/)
Essay Review
Sarah Chan;
(2018)
In Search of a Post-Genomic Bioethics: Lessons from Political Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB258650708/)
Be the first to comment!