Impact of ALife Simulation of Darwinian and Lamarckian Evolutionary Theories

Until nowadays, the scientific community firmly rejected the Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, a theory mostly associated with the name of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1774-1829). Though largely dismissed when applied to biological organisms, this theory found its place in a young discipline called Artificial Life. Based on the two models of Darwinian and Lamarckian evolutionary theories built using neural networks and genetic algorithms, this research presents a notion of the potential impact of implementation of Lamarckian knowledge inheritance across disciplines, including biology, computer science and philosophy. There is an evidence that Lamarckian organisms can have wide practical application across several different domains, therefore this type of research should be allowed and encouraged. However, even though Lamarckian evolutionary algorithm already holds major benefits for various disciplines and promises even more, its implementation in Artificial Life needs regulation to avoid malevolent use.