Hello all,
If I remember correctly from my philosophy of biology classes there was a book that was published years before Darwin's Origin of Species that presented a comprehensive overview of animalia and suggested that a process of change was responsible for the introduction of variant traits in various animals. However, it did not present any potential mechanism for this change, differentiating it from Darwin's work. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
I also have memory of a work that suggested that variations in animals came about through the actions of their ancestors while alive (Giraffes getting long necks by stretching for fruit in high trees, etc.) but I believe that this is a separate piece.
Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? a (p.s. I'm asking in /r/AskHistorians because I suspect that this isn't technical enough for /r/AskScience)
Not certain about the first one- there were many many thinkers before Darwin that suggested that species change over time, though none of them quite reached his theory. Just to name a few: De rerum natura, various publications of Leclerc, the works of Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather), etc...
The second concept that you're thinking of is Lamarckism. In 1802, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivants, which argued that species change over time through an adaptive force, as you describe.
There were several. Origin didn't introduce evolution, only the idea of natural selection as an explanation for why and how evolution occurs.
Most probably you mean one of Alfred Russel Wallace's works.