Abstract
RETURNING to the much-discussed question of the transmission of acquired characters, Prof. Richard Semon goes over the whole ground. Conclusions—both affirmative and negative—have been based on certain sets of data, but all the facts must be faced if we are to form a sound judgment. This is indeed what many biologists have tried to do. The first chapter, which is historical, includes the commendable suggestion that it is time to stop using inexact terms like “Lamarckism,” so often taken as synonymous with the theory of the transmission of acquired modifications. In the second chapter the author formulates the question at issue: A stimulus sets up an excitation in a parental body; the residual effect of this excitation is a change in the reaction capacity (an “Engramm”); can we say that in favourable circumstances there results a change in the hereditary potency of the germ-cells, and of such a nature that the offspring show a change in the same direction as that exhibited in the parent?
Das Problem der Vererbung âerworbener Eigenschaften.â
By R. Semon. Pp. viii + 203. (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1912.) Price 3.20 marks.
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T., J. Das Problem der Vererbung “erworbener Eigenschaften” . Nature 91, 131 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091131a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091131a0