Lamarck vs Darwin: do creatures strive or does nature select?

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LAMARCK vs CHARLES DARWIN go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.

LAMARCK

The giraffe stretches for the high leaves, and that striving passes to its young - life improves by effort, not accident.

CHARLES DARWIN

Effort is a lovely story, but the neck that reaches higher simply survives to breed while others starve; nature does the choosing, not the creature.

LAMARCK

You reduce a living will to a butcher's lottery - where is the animal's own drive toward perfection in your cold ledger?

CHARLES DARWIN

There is no drive toward perfection, only descent with modification - and the fossils, my friend, kept no record of anyone trying harder.

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