Role of de Vries in the rediscovery of Mendel's paper. II. Did de Vries really understand Mendel's paper?
In this paper, we discuss briefly three of the several lines of evidence that we believe demonstrate de Vries's lack of understanding of Mendel's paper. In our view, at least part of de Vries's failure of understanding derives from the fact that he appears to have viewed Mendel's paper as being mainly about the inheritance of characters that was his own interest. Therefore, he looked at it to see whether Mendel had found any laws of inheritance. Mendel had done his research for another purpose, to find the laws describing the formation of hybrids and the development of their offspring. Thus, de Vries started his examination of Mendel's paper with a very fundamental misunderstanding of what it was about.
Corcos
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Monaghan
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D005602:France; D005823:Genetics / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008957:Models, Genetic