whole idea of adaptation contemptuously as mere teleological speculation. The Lamarckians and the Vitalists rejected the idea of natural selection as too materialistic and as giving insufficient weight to will and effort and other psychological forces. The early Mendelians, fascinated by the discovery of genetic units (gene-differences) with large effects (such as hornlessness in cattle, or albinism in many vertebrates), wanted to make mutation responsible for positive evolutionary change, and assigned to natural selection only the essentially negative function of getting rid of harmful
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