Seminar on History and Philosophy of Science

Abstract: Mendel's 1865 "law governing the formation and development of hybrids" was one of the most prominent early examples of a mathematical model in biology, and Mendel's concepts and methods have remained of crucial importance for genetics to this day. They proved superior to those developed by Darwin, who, known for his materialistic theory of evolution ("descent with modification"), in 1868 also proposed a theory of heredity "pangenesis"), in which blending inheritance and heritable effects of environmental conditions predominated. Starting in the 1930s, Mendel's ideas and methods were attacked and rejected in the 1930s and 40s in the Soviet Union by Trofim Lysenko's anti-genetic and pro-Darwinian doctrine, "Soviet Creative Darwinism."