Experiments in plant hybridisation / Mendel's original paper in English translation, with commentary and assessment by Sir Ronald A. Fisher, together with a reprint of W. Bateson's biographical notice of Mendel ; edited by J.H. Bennett.

  • Mendel, Gregor, 1822-1884.
Date:
[1965]
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Experiments in plant hybridisation / Mendel's original paper in English translation, with commentary and assessment by Sir Ronald A. Fisher, together with a reprint of W. Bateson's biographical notice of Mendel ; edited by J.H. Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 EXPERIMENTS IN PLANT HYBRIDISATION successful; with quantitative characters, for example, or with microorganisms widely different in their reproductive processes from the higher plants and animals at first investigated. The facts available in 1900 were at least sufficient to establish Mendel's contribution as one of the greatest experimental advances in the history of biology. The minority who could not adjust their ideas, only demonstrated in the ensuing con¬ troversies how great a revolution in biological thought was in progress. For the twentieth century, therefore, in order to understand Mendel's paper, it is necessary to set aside very much that to us is obvious. We must come with a fresh mind to such questions as; What was Mendel's purpose in the series of experiments he sets forth ? Or, what, at their conclusion, did he think he had demonstrated ? Of the phenomena he had discovered how confident was he that they extended beyond the genus Pisum ? If he was tempted by the notion of generalisation, were his hopes shattered by his experience with Hieracium, in which, in the absence of true sexual reproduction he was unable to demonstrate the Mendelian phenomena ? The eight years which he tells us his researches had occupied, are known from his letters to have extended from 1856 to 1863. Mendel had, therefore, more than a year for the prepara¬ tion of his report, which was evidently a work of studious care. When he started, the evolution of organisms by progressive modification was not a burning question. In 1865 it was the central preoccupation of the biological world. It is therefore mis¬ leading to say, as Bateson does {p. go) with the views of Darwin, which at that time were coming into prominence, Mendel did not find himself in full agreement, and he embarked on his experiments . . as though Mendel's primary aim was to enter into the evolutionary controversy. It is improbable indeed that he had even heard of Darwin at the beginning of his work. When he came to write it up, the situation in this respect was greatly changed, and it is interesting to note the references to evolution in his paper. In the first of these he ex¬ presses the modest confidence that an understanding of in¬ heritance had an important contribution to make towards the understanding of evolution; a process which he appears