Lamarckism isn’t about epigenetics, nor vice-versa. Some people are calling epigenetic inheritance Lamarckism, but many (in my experience, most) colleagues reject this label as inaccurate. For one thing, although epigenetic inheritance on the single-cell level is a simple fact, and amply demonstrated, it hasn’t been shown to contribute to evolution in any way, and trans-generational epigenetic inheritance in multi-cellular organisms is a difficult concept to demonstrate (there are papers which claim that, but these are contentious, since they fail to demonstrate a persistent effect across several generations). The claims of epigenetic-inheritance-as-Lamarckism are on par with saying that a person’s nationality is Lamarckian: If I emigrate and take on a new nationality, there’s a high chance I’ll confer this nationality to my offspring, simply by raising them in that country. Yet no evolutionary biologist would claim that nationality is in any way part of my genetic heritage.
