Closing the door on Hugo de Vries' Mendelism.

Abstract

Summary Recent studies have shown that Hugo de Vries did not rediscover Mendel's laws independently and that the classical story of the rediscovery of Mendel is largely a myth. Until now, however, no satisfactory account has been provided of the background and development of de Vries' views on heredity and evolution. The basic tenets of de Vries' Mutationstheorie (1901–1903) and his conception of Mendelism are still insufficiently understood. It has been suggested that de Vries failed to assimilate Mendelism and that he wrote his Mutationstheorie in a state of confusion. In this paper I argue that we can arrive at a better understanding by adopting a more symmetrical approach. My analysis will concentrate on three important aspects of de Vries' thinking which have been insufficiently appreciated until now. The first is that de Vries' reading of Mendel compelled him to change his conception of the hereditary particles, the pangenes, in a fundamental way. The second is de Vries' use of the notion of ‘heredi...