Friday, February 10, 2006

It's always nice ...

... when someone confirms something you have said -- and does so more convincingly than you ever could yourself. Last month, I wrote the following here:

The great biologist of the 19th century wasn't Darwin, who may have devised a grand, grand theory, but whose contribution to practical biology seems to have been negligible. The really great 19th-century biologist was Gregor Mendel, who spent his time patiently and persistently gathering evidence and drawing sound inferences therefrom.

Hiram Caton, in An Article of Faith, also notes that "Darwin made no discovery of Nobel Prize calibre," and goes on to say this:

The correct conception of inheritance was published in 1866 by Gregor Mendel. His carefully controlled experiments on hybrid peas enabled him to formulate two laws of inheritance. It was the beginning of genetics and the beginning of mathematical analysis in biological studies.

Defintely read the whole thing.

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