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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas — 348 | Jessica Riskin on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Life as Creative Agency
Scout ratingSCOUT· 58%1h 15m·2026-03-23·Science

348 | Jessica Riskin on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Life as Creative Agency

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas · 348

"Lamarkism" is a term often attached to a seemingly discredited idea in evolutionary biology: that one organism could acquire characteristics (e.g., becoming stronger through exercise) that would then be inherited by its descendants. This is a different story than the one ultimately told by the modern synthesis of…

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If you cut off mouse tails for thousands of generations, you've removed tails from the domain of selection entirely. Mutations that degrade tail development would no longer be selected against. They'd accumulate through neutral drift. Event…

@cliffordbohm · YouTube comment

Hello Sean, thank you for putting all of this effort into your Mindscape series and the Biggest Ideas in the Universe. It is amazing to be able to get so much good information from such a great mind!

@EVL6479 · YouTube comment

This was very disappointing. There was so much thinly disguised __woo__ confounded by color commentary speculating on motives.

@wadehines9971 · YouTube comment

She is a historian it would ve nice if you talked to her about Jesus

@Whocares-m3s · YouTube comment

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