It was often used as a sort of 'scientific' racism, to convince people that certain 'racial stock' was superior to others in terms of cleanliness, intelligence etc. The darker side of the movement arose when researchers became interested in controlling the breeding of human beings, so that only the people with the best genes could reproduce and improve the species. This was an immensely popular movement in the first quarter of the 20th century and was presented as a mathematical science, which could predict the traits and characteristics of human beings. In the frenzy of research that followed, one line of thought branched off into social theory and developed into eugenics. In 1900, Mendel's theories, which had found a regular statistical pattern for features like height and colour, were rediscovered. The term 'eugenics' wasįirst used around 1883 to refer to the "science" of heredity and good breeding. In the history of DNA, the Eugenics movement is a notably dark chapter, which highlights the lack of understanding regarding the new discovery at the time. View the slide 1900s - The Eugenics Movement We now know that the 'invisible' traits he had identified were genes. In his 1866 published paper, Mendel described the action of 'invisible' factors in providing for visible traits in predictable ways. So, in the previous example, the green trait was recessive and the yellow trait was dominant.
Mendel coined the terms 'recessive' and 'dominant' in relation to traits, in order to explain this phenomenon. However, in the next generation of plants, the green peas returned in a ratio of 3:1. He found that when a yellow pea plant and a green pea plant were bred together their offspring was always yellow. He identified seven characteristics: plant height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour. In fact, he was so ahead of the game that it took three decades for his paper to be taken seriously.īetween 18 Mendel conducted experiments on pea plants, attempting to crossbreed "true" lines in specific combinations. However, he enjoyed no such notoriety during his lifetime, with his discoveries largely passing the scientific community by. Today, he is widely considered to be the father of genetics. In 1866, an unknown Augustinian monk was theįirst person to shed light on the way in which characteristics are passed down the generations. View the slide 1866 - Gregor Mendel discovers the basic principles of genetics If people had evolved from animals over millions of years the innate respect for their body would still be here today. The cheetah will go hungry rather than push itself beyond the point it can recover. To Ponder One must simply consider the fact that through thousands of years of evolution animals have the highest respect for their body yet people do not respect their bodies. It also suggested that people were animals and might have evolved from apes this part of his work has been shown to be inaccurate. The book was extremely controversial, as it challenged the dominant view of the period that many people literally took that God had created the world in seven days. Whilst his study contained some truth many areas such as the link between animal and human evolution are being shown to be untrue through new discoveries of ancient ancestors. This led to a species gradually changing over time. The Origin of Species was the culmination of these efforts and argued that the living things best suited to their environment are more likely to survive, reproduce and pass on their characteristics to future generations. On his return to England, Darwin proposed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural selection, which he then worked on over the following 20 years. The breakthrough came when he noted that the Galapagos Islands each supported its own variety of finch, which were closely related but had slight differences that seemed to have adapted in response to their individual environments. During his time away was influenced by Lyell's suggestion that fossils found in rocks were evidence of animals that had lived millions of years ago.
In 1831, Darwin had joined a five year scientific expedition. In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, changing the way many people viewed the world forever. View the slide 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species
0 kommentar(er)
