Darwin and Mendel

[SnowyMacie]

I've mentioned this only once or twice in this subforum, but finally decided to make a thread about it. If you need a history refresher: Greg Mendel and Charles Darwin were contemporaries, but while everywhere had heard of Darwin, no one knew about the Augustinian monk, in modern day Czech Republic discovering genetics. As you may or may not know, when Darwin's theory first came out, no one knew how genetics work, they knew traits passed on, but no no one knew how. Mendel, who I'm not sure if he read Origin of Species, did discover genetics. In many ways, Darwin discovered what happened and Mendel discovered how.

My biology professor theorized that if Darwin had known about Mendel and his works, there would be no controversy, or at least significantly less, over the theory of evolution. Mendel's theory explained the gaping holes in evolution at the time. We would have been able to see from the earliest days "Evolution is simply a long-term result of that." There's other things involved as well, but the point is we disconnect evolution from genetics, we just didn't know about genetics until many years after Darwin's work.

My question is this, what do you think would have happened if Darwin had known about Mendel's work on genetics? Most specifically, do you think Creationism would still be as prevalent today? My person answer, I think it would be, but much smaller, and on the very fringes of Christianity.

 

[Loudmouth]

My question is this, what do you think would have happened if Darwin had known about Mendel's work on genetics? Most specifically, do you think Creationism would still be as prevalent today? My person answer, I think it would be, but much smaller, and on the very fringes of Christianity.

There are still Christians who deny Heliocentrism because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Religious dogma can be a powerful thing.

As to Darwin, if he had understood the implications of Mendel's work to his theory he certainly wouldn't have gone with pangenesis as his source of variation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemmule_(pangenesis)

Darwin couldn't figure out how brand new variations could survive within a population that is dominated by the ancestral form. He thought that the new variation would be diluted out, like a drop of chocolate syrup in a huge glass of milk. What Mendel's work demonstrated is that variations are not melded together and diluted. Rather, they are indivisible units. Problem solved.

 

[AV1611VET]

He thought that the new variation would be diluted out, like a drop of chocolate syrup in a huge glass of milk. What Mendel's work demonstrated is that variations are not melded together and diluted. Rather, they are indivisible units. Problem solved.

Mixture vs. Solution?

 

[Willtor]

I've mentioned this only once or twice in this subforum, but finally decided to make a thread about it. If you need a history refresher: Greg Mendel and Charles Darwin were contemporaries, but while everywhere had heard of Darwin, no one knew about the Augustinian monk, in modern day Czech Republic discovering genetics. As you may or may not know, when Darwin's theory first came out, no one knew how genetics work, they knew traits passed on, but no no one knew how. Mendel, who I'm not sure if he read Origin of Species, did discover genetics. In many ways, Darwin discovered what happened and Mendel discovered how.

My biology professor theorized that if Darwin had known about Mendel and his works, there would be no controversy, or at least significantly less, over the theory of evolution. Mendel's theory explained the gaping holes in evolution at the time. We would have been able to see from the earliest days "Evolution is simply a long-term result of that." There's other things involved as well, but the point is we disconnect evolution from genetics, we just didn't know about genetics until many years after Darwin's work.

My question is this, what do you think would have happened if Darwin had known about Mendel's work on genetics? Most specifically, do you think Creationism would still be as prevalent today? My person answer, I think it would be, but much smaller, and on the very fringes of Christianity.

Early opposition to evolution would have been muted, somewhat. But even then, some characteristics were most simply explained by contemporary notions of heritable traits. One of the big topics in heritability was human height (easy to measure on a wide scale), which _looks_ like regression to mediocrity. The reason, of course, is that height is a complex trait. But even if we focus only on genetics, this would have been one of the major early barriers to genetics, one way or another.

Re: creationism: Creationism arose from a different cause. When it appeared in the early 20th century, I don't think there was anything to be done about evolution or genetics education that could have slowed it down.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Given how few Apologetic objections to evolution have much to do with what even Darwin said, let alone modern evolutionary theory, I doubt that Darwin's model being more complete from the start would have any effect on the arguments against it. Perhaps a few different quotes would be mined, here and there, but you'd still get "why are there still monkeys?" and "life can't come from nothing" and "it's impossible for something like a human to be the result of pure random chance" and "but what use is half an eye?" and so on, and I'm sure they'd be just as popular in that world as they are in this.

The arguments against evolution are not scientific in nature, they're political or dogmatic and, as such, what the actual science is is irrelevant. It's picked on because Biblical literalists see it as contradicting the Bible and if you believe the Bible to be literal and inerrant then anything which contradicts it must be false. So evolution gets the whole "it's just a theory" sideshow, despite being the scientific theory that's had the most supporting evidence of any theory in the history of science. What Darwin actually said, and what Darwin would have said had he known Mendel's work, doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to religious objections.

 

[Willtor]

Given how few Apologetic objections to evolution have much to do with what even Darwin said, let alone modern evolutionary theory, I doubt that Darwin's model being more complete from the start would have any effect on the arguments against it. Perhaps a few different quotes would be mined, here and there, but you'd still get "why are there still monkeys?" and "life can't come from nothing" and "it's impossible for something like a human to be the result of pure random chance" and "but what use is half an eye?" and so on, and I'm sure they'd be just as popular in that world as they are in this.

The arguments against evolution are not scientific in nature, they're political or dogmatic and, as such, what the actual science is is irrelevant. It's picked on because Biblical literalists see it as contradicting the Bible and if you believe the Bible to be literal and inerrant then anything which contradicts it must be false. So evolution gets the whole "it's just a theory" sideshow, despite being the scientific theory that's had the most supporting evidence of any theory in the history of science. What Darwin actually said, and what Darwin would have said had he known Mendel's work, doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to religious objections.

Today, this is certainly true. Today, arguments against evolution aren't scientific in nature.

But they were often scientific in nature, in Darwin's day. Evolution flew in the face of everything that was known about inheritance. What's amazing to me is that it made as much progress as it did before modern genetics. Today, knowledge in related fields has progressed and we have a lot more data, so it's easy to say, "look how obvious evolution is." But it wasn't so in the late 19th century.

The question is: would creationism have gotten a foothold if genetics had been better understood, earlier? I think no. But I actually think the reason creationism appeared was because of the de-democratization of science. In the U.S., older philosophies of science held sway, and their replacement within the scientific community led to a sort of rebellion by some of the educated (but non-scientific) populace.

A cursory comparison of creationism and the first couple chapters of Genesis will show glaring inconsistencies and artifacts. This is because creationism was designed specially to combat evolution and modern geology -- not to illuminate the Bible.

 

[ecco]

My question is this, what do you think would have happened if Darwin had known about Mendel's work on genetics? Most specifically, do you think Creationism would still be as prevalent today? My person answer, I think it would be, but much smaller, and on the very fringes of Christianity.

My question is this, what do you think would have happened if the early christians had decided to omit the old jewish writings (which became The Old Testament) from accepted scripture? Most specifically, do you think Creationism would still be as prevalent today? My personal answer, no one would be refuting evolution today.