Passage Discussion

by **LSAT-Chang** Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:32 pm

Are the two sides of the debate:

1) inheritance of acquired characteristics never occurs (biologists)

2) inheritance of acquired characteristics does occur (author, Lamarck)

How does paragraph 2 and 3 relate to the central argument? One thing I noticed though was in paragraph 1, the last sentence finishes off by saying "YET new research has uncovered numerous examples of the phenomenon", so I thought that paragraph 2 and paragraph 3 were all examples given for this phenomenon, so I guess it supports the central argument side of "inheritance of acquired characteristics does occur"? Would you guys agree with me? Another thought I had was.. what role does paragraph 4 exactly play? It introduces new ideas of "vertically" and "horizontally" inherited characteristics.. any clue? I get so lost in these science passages that I have a hard time assigning what roles each paragraph really plays to the central argument.