Gregor Mendel and the Seven Genes (2)

Abstract

Unlike the traditional view, it is not mysterious about how G. Mendel chose the seven characters of the pea, Pisum sativum, that he studied. He first chose the pea that met three conditions he set up and repeated experiments for two years. Apparently, he knew that those characters were controlled by countable elements. Then, he derived the prediction on the basis of his idea about the elements, and selected the seven characters that satisfied the prediction. He knew "no prediction no science". In population genetics the Hardy-Weinberg principle is well known and cited in many papers and books. However, Mendel already derived the same principle in his paper, because he was acquainted also with physics and mathematics. Actually, the principle was trivial when they derived, but not at all when Mendel did. It is also well known that Mendel's laws were forgotten and rediscovered at the term of the 19th century. That may not be true either. His laws were internationally well known before the rediscovery. In fact, the 1881-year version of the Encyclopedia Britannica contains his laws.