In the 1870s, Ewald Hering and Samuel Butler provided what was, for that time, a scientifically coherent foundation for the Lamarckist view that positive adaptations to the environment acquired during an individual's lifetime can be transmitted to the offspring. Observing that heredity was a form of memory (involving stored information), they distinguished what are now known as genotype and phenotype and proposed that cognitive abilities present in the the most elementary organisms might mediate a transmission of acquired adaptations. While compatible with the then-available facts of evolution, this Butlerian version of 'intelligent design' was rendered less credible by subsequent appreciations of the discrete (discontinuous) inheritance of many phenotypic characters (Mendelism) and of the separation of germ line from soma (Weismanism). However, it can now be seen that 21st-century bioinformatics has 19th-century roots.

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作为信息传输的遗传：巴特勒的“智能设计”

在 1870 年代，埃瓦尔德·赫林和塞缪尔·巴特勒为拉马克主义者的观点提供了当时具有科学连贯性的基础，即个人一生中获得的对环境的积极适应可以传递给后代。观察到遗传是一种记忆形式（涉及存储的信息），他们区分了现在已知的基因型和表型，并提出最基本的生物体中存在的认知能力可能会介导后天适应的传递。虽然与当时可用的进化事实兼容，但由于随后对许多表型特征（孟德尔主义）的离散（不连续）遗传以及种系与体细胞的分离的认识，这种巴特勒版本的“智能设计”变得不那么可信了。魏斯曼主义）。