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The recent historiography of genetics

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Summary

It is evident how much Olby and Provine have contributed to a better understanding of the emergence of genetics. It is equally evident, I believe, how many obscure issues still remain to be elucidated. Indeed, their volumes have raised as many new questions as they have answered old ones. In particular, the role of constructive as well as retarding contemporary concepts in the development of new generalizations still requires far more analysis. The somewhat independent trends of various national schools and the influence of neighboring fields (e.g. statistics, animal husbandry, systematics) are other areas deserving further study. All these influences contributed, one way or another, to the growth and maturation of genetics.37

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References

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  5. For instance, he fails to notice the drastic difference between the domestication of animals and that of plants. Hybridization has played a very subordinate role in animals, but has been involved in the origin of many of the most important crop plants. More generally, hybridization is frequent in the plant kingdom and is not only responsible for all allopolyploids, but also for much other reticulate evolution. Among animals hybridization above the subspecies level is rare and in most taxa negligible.

  6. E.Mayr, “Isolation as an Evolutionary Factor,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 103 (1959), 221–230, A “variety” can be a different individual, like a redhead or albino, or a different population, like a race or subspecies. To make a distinction between these fundamentally different alternatives is of decisive importance in genetics, systematics, and evolution. A typologist has no reliable criteria to permit him to make such a distinction-that is, to differentiate “essential” from “accidental” characters. This was not possible until the biological species concept had been adopted and population thinking had permeated biology.

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  7. Ibid.

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  12. This was well described by G. Allen, in “Thomas Hunt Morgan and the Problem of Natural Selection,” J. Hist. Biol., 1 (1968), 130: “It is perhaps unfortunate that Morgan chose to retain the word ‘mutation’ in referring to those small Mendelian differences he observed for it further confused the issues of variation by failing to distinguish between large variations which DeVries considered new species and small but definite variations which occurred within the limits of an existing species. Morgan himself included a whole range of variations within the term ‘mutation.’ But many of his readers, familiar with the term only as DeVries had used it, were understandably confused about what type of variations Morgan actually thought were acted upon by natural selection.”

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  16. See W.Coleman, “Bateson and Chromosomes; Conservative Thought in Science,” Centaurus, 15 (1970), 228–314, for a brilliant analysis of the effect of physical concepts on biological explanation.

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  17. This topic is well discussed by François Jacob in the last chapter (“L'intégron”) of his La Logique du Vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1970).

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  19. R. C.Olby, Origins of Mendelism (London: Constable, 1966), p. 21.

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  21. R. C.Olby, Origins of Mendelism (London: Constable, 1966). p. 51.

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  22. See KarlvonNaegeli, Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1884). To establish this point, it is necessary to provide a short résumé of Naegeli's theory of inheritance. According to him, the idioplasm [= genetic material] consists of long strings of micelles. Each string is composed of one kind of micelles, but differs from all the other strings by the specificity of its micelles. These strings are passed without interruption from cell to cell [They are not restricted to the nucleus. E. M.]. “All increase of idioplasm consists in a growth of these strings and takes place through an elongation of the string owing to the addition of new micelles” (p. 33). During growth “the connection of the strings of idioplasm retains its specificity and configuration and the specific quality of the idioplasm is given by this configuration” (p. 37). He then asks what happens during fertilization (pp. 199–224). Can it be a simple “Durchdringung” [= blending] of the soluble genetic material of the parental gametes? This Naegeli rejects as incompatible with the extraordinarily precise organization of the genome. Nor is it possible, says Naegeli, that the homologous parental strings attach themselves to each other, because this would lead after each fertilization to a doubling of the cross section of each string. [Naegeli clearly sees the need for a reduction division. E. M.] How else can one keep the cross section of the strings of micelles constant? “In order that the cross section remains, on the whole, constant it is necessary to combine the idioplasm strings of the parents into new strings the length of which is the sum of the length of the parental strings. Thus a paternal and a maternal ‘Anlage’ becomes a filial Anlage of equal strength, that is, a group with the same number of micelles in cross section. It is only when some parental Anlagen differ “wesentlich” [essentially, or drastically], as occurs in the hybridization of races, varieties, and species, that the strings attach themselves laterally, resulting in an enlargement of the cross section.” Naegeli continues to say that such an enlargement of the amount of idioplasm affects only very few Anlagen. “The doubling of the length of the strings, as a result of fertilization, is nothing more than the first growth step in the new ontogeny.” It is evident that the fusion of homologous parental strings is strictly blending, since the strings are qualitatively identical in their longitudinal axis.

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  24. While this essay was in press, I discovered that, some years ago, J.S. Wilkie had already made the same point (1963, in Crombie, ed., Scientific Change, p. 602.).

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  26. DeVries, Intracellular Pangenesis, (Jena: Fischer, 1889); p. 9.

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  27. DeVries, Intracellular Pangenesis, (Jena: Fischer, 1889), pp. 18, 33.

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  28. Olby, Origins of Mendelism (London: Constable, 1966); pp. 129, 189.

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  29. Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 56.

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  30. Professor Provine has informed me that Bateson did not always insist on a complete difference between continuous and discontinuous variation, particularly in his later years (see, for instance, Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 115, n. 48).

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  31. Weldon's designation of DeVries and Bateson as “naturalists” shows that labels such as “naturalist,” “experimentalist,” “laboratory scientist,” and so on, must not be taken too seriously. The “naturalist” Weldon did a good deal of experimental work, and the “laboratory embryologist” Bateson worked as a naturalist when doing his Russian researches. Still, there were noticeable philosophical differences between those who were primarily naturalists and those who were primarily laboratory experimentalists.

  32. This statement may seem contradicted by the fact that Bateson and other Mendelians talked a great deal about the importance of natural selection. However, when we look closely at the discussions of these authors, we discover that under “natural selection,” they understood the elimination of deleterious deviations from the type. It is the same concept of selection that we find in the writings of Blyth and other pre-Darwinian authors. Evolutionary advance, for Bateson, was caused by the pressure of favorable mutations, and not by creative selection in the Darwinian sense.

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  34. M. B.Adams, “The Founding of Population Genetics: Contributions of the Chetverikov School 1924–1934,” J. Hist. Biol., 1 (1968), 23–29.

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  35. Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. x.

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  36. For some of the newer developments in population genetics see E.Mayr, Populations, Species, and Evolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1970), pp. 154–160, 162–185; B. Wallace, Topics in Population Genetics (New York: Norton, 1968); R. C. Lewontin, “Population Genetics,” in Ann. Rev. Genet., 1 (1967) 37–70; I. Franklin and R. C. Lewontin, “Is the Gene the Unit of Selection?,” Genetics 65 (1970) 707–734; R. C. Lewontin [review], Q. Rev. Biol. 46 (1971), 66–67.

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  37. For a discussion of this work and refernces to the original papers see, for animals: B.Rensch, Das Prinzip geographischer Rassenkreise, etc. (Berlin: Borntraeger, 1929) and E. Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1963), p. 298 and elsewhere in Chapter 11; for plants see G. L. Stebbins, Variation and Evolution in Plants (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), passim, and V. Grant, The Origin of Adaptation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 337 and chapter 16.

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  38. I acknowledge with appreciation many constructive suggestions received from W. Coleman, F. Churchill, Jonathan Hodge, Michael Lerner, B. Norton and W. B. Provine, after they had read an earlier draft.

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Mayr, E. The recent historiography of genetics. J Hist Biol 6, 125–154 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00137301

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