Por que Darwin não descobriu as leis de Mendel?

Why didn't Darwin discover Mendel's laws?

Jonathan C Howard

Institute for Genetics, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Strasse 47, 50674 Cologne, Germany

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Biology 2009, 8:15doi:10.1186/jbiol123

Published: 24 February 2009

Abstract

Darwin's focus on small quantitative variations as the raw material of evolution may have prevented him from discovering the laws of inheritance.

Opinion

Heredity and variation were two concepts that played a central role in Darwin's development of the theory of evolution by natural selection. The enormous effort he devoted to their analysis is reflected not only in the entire two-volume The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication [1], but also in countless experiments and observations narrated elsewhere. Yet despite a lifetime's efforts, he never came close to understanding the logic of inheritance, while his views on the nature and causation of variation oscillated back and forth between a concept of random, quasi-physical events outside environmental control, which indeed looks decidedly modern, and a concept, evidently owing much to his predecessors, of environmentally driven adaptive change transmitted to the germ cells. Here, I ask why Darwin failed, even after so much effort, to reach a correct position on these critical problems. The solution, at least to the inheritance problem, was apparently easily amenable to an experimental approach with materials that were daily to hand. Furthermore the time was ripe in the middle of the 19th century, with many breeders interested in the problem for commercial as well as scientific reasons. And after all, Mendel (Figure 1) solved the logic of inheritance in his own backyard in the monastery at Brno [2] with no more technology than Darwin had at his disposal in his garden at Down House. Why couldn't Darwin have done it too?

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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:

Darwin não descobriu as leis de Mendel porque estava 'amarrado' nas suas especulações transformistas. Ao contrário de Darwin, Mendel pode descobrí-las porque se sujeitou às evidências encontradas na sua pesquisa.