The Mendelian and Non-Mendelian Origins of Genetics

Abstract

Mendel's paper as part of a large body of nineteenth-century literature on practical plant- and animal breeding and experimental hybridization, which contained a confusing and contradictory assortment of observations on heredity, some in line with Mendel’s, but most not. After 1900, this literature was, in a sense, rediscovered along with Mendel, and it then played a dual role. For critics like W. F. R. Weldon, the non-Mendelian cases falsified Mendel’s laws. But for Mendel’s three co-rediscoverers, William Bateson, and others, they represented challenges to be met within a research program that would modify and extend Mendel’s system and establish a new scientific discipline.