24 AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN GENETICS 



dimension became incorporated with the old rigid three dimensional 

 framework of space. 



Genetics as a separate science is a part of this study of the long- 

 range temporal changes of organisms. The story of its birth is one of 

 the most pecuHar in the history of science. There had persisted, through- 

 out the nineteenth century, a certain interest in the problems of breed- 

 ing, which was connected particularly with the industry of seed 

 production. The fundamental discovery of the existence of discrete 

 hereditary factors was made by Mendel, a monk living in what is 

 now Czechoslovakia. It was published in 1865-66, in a somewhat 

 obscure journal,^ but copies were sent to several of the important 

 biologists of the day. An extraordinary fate overtook it; it was 

 totally neglected. The reasons for this are still obscure. It is hard 

 to beUeve that its importance could have been overlooked if the 

 problem of heredity had been in the centre of biological interest. 

 Perhaps those biologists who did interest themselves in the subject 

 reacted too strongly against the prevalent mechanistic views and 

 found Mendel's atomistic "factors" not sufficiently "biological" for 

 their taste. 



Whatever the reason, Mendel's papers were almost completely for- 

 gotten until 1900, when they were rediscovered almost simultaneously 

 by de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. Their significance was imme- 

 diately appreciated, and confirmatory results were quickly obtained. 

 The new science which grew up round them was, one may say, for- 

 mally inaugurated by Bateson at a conference on plant breeding in 

 1906, when he coined the word "genetics." By this word he understood 

 the science whose "labours are devoted to the elucidation of the pheno- 

 mena of heredity and variation; in other words to the physiology of 

 Descent." 



It is important to notice that Bateson included in his definition not 

 only heredity in the narrow sense of the transmission of characters 

 from parent to offspring, but the whole problem of descent or repro- 

 duction. In the early years of genetics, interest was mainly concen- 

 trated on investigating the laws of inheritance. But genetics is really a 

 much wider science than this ; it cannot be separated from the study of 

 embryology and evolution. The three aspects of the temporal changes 

 of organisms, heredity, development and evolution, are as intimately 

 related as, for instance, physiology and biochemistry among the sciences 

 which deal with organisms as going concerns. Moreover, we must 

 ^ Translated in Bateson 1930. 



