Engrams and biological regulation: What was “wrong” with organic memory?

Abstract

The idea that offspring could inherit attributes or dispositions that their parents had acquired is associated with the thinking of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. But the early twentieth century saw several attempts to modernize the concept as a form of “organic” memory. I focus on one uncommonly comprehensive attempt, that of the German morphologist Richard Semon. Semon’s case is instructive because, despite an evidence-based approach that drew on cell biology, neurophysiology, and evolution, his idea was strongly resisted. Some critics failed even to address his central claim. I use criticisms of Semon’s attempt to explore some philosophical, social, and scientific barriers that combined to facilitate the decline of modernized notions of organic memory in the first half of the twentieth century, especially as applied to the science of heredity.