Study of heredity and variation
The Greek Influence on ideas of
inheritance
Early ideas about inheritance
• Cultivation of many plants, including
wheat, corn and rice as well as the
date palm began as early as 5,000 B.C.
• The appearance of new varieties from
unconscious attempts to breed
and cultivate must surely have led in time
to conscious attempts to
propagate desirable traits and the
elimination of undesirable traits by
the breeders.
• Hippocrates – “Humors”, which could be
altered during an
individuals lifetime and therefore diseased
or normal, were
drawn from various parts of the body to
the semen and
passed on to the offspring. This
“pangenesis” theory even
formed the basis of Darwin’s early ideas of
inheritance.
• Aristotle – semen produced a “vital
heat” that cooked and shaped the
menstrual blood giving it the capacity to
produce
offspring with the same “form” as the
parent.
ideas of inheritance
(1600- 1850)
Pre-formationism – sex cells
contain a complete miniature
adult (the homunculus)
Epigenesis – presumably put forth
by Harvey, held that body
structures were not present in
the sex cells, but were formed
anew.
Other ideas of inheritance
• Pangenesis – the inheritance of acquired
characteristics –
put forward again by Jean Baptiste
Lamarck.
Blending Inheritance – the belief that
characteristics of
parents blended like paint, e.g., mix blue
and yellow and get green paint.
Gregor Mendel
• Seven years after Darwin published his
theory, Mendel, an
Austrian monk, published (in 1866) his
findings on inheritance
in peas. Mendel discovered the rules
governing “vertical” gene
transmission.