Journal of the History of Biology (2014) 47:501–546 Ó The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com 2014 DOI 10.1007/s10739-014-9383-2 Mendelian-Mutationism: The Forgotten Evolutionary Synthesis ARLIN STOLTZFUS Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research 9600 Gudelsky Drive Rockville, MD 20850 USA E-mail:
[email protected] Biosystems and Biomaterials Division NIST 100 Bureau Drive Gaithersburg, MD 20899 USA KELE CABLE Program in the History of Science and Technology University of Minnesota 108 Pillsbury Hall, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE Minneapolis, MN 55455-0231 USA E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. According to a classical narrative, early geneticists, failing to see how Mendelism provides the missing pieces of Darwin’s theory, rejected gradual changes and advocated an implausible yet briefly popular view of evolution-by-mutation; after decades of delay (in which synthesis was prevented by personal conflicts, disciplinary rivalries, and anti-Darwinian animus), Darwinism emerged on a new Mendelian basis. Based on the works of four influential early geneticists – Bateson, de Vries, Morgan and Punnett –, and drawing on recent scholarship, we offer an alternative that turns the classical view on its head. For early geneticists, embracing discrete inheritance and the mutation theory (for the origin of hereditary variation) did not entail rejection of selection, but rejection of Darwin’s non-Mendelian views of heredity and variation, his doctrine of natura non facit saltum, and his conception of ‘‘natural selection’’ as a creative force that shapes features out of masses of infinitesimal differences. We find no evidence of a delay in synthesizing mutation, rules of discrete inheritance, and selection in a Mendelian-Mutationist Synthesis.