Abstract
This paper addresses the teaching of advanced high school courses or undergraduate courses for non-biology majors about genetics or history of genetics. It will probably be difficult to take the approach described here in a high school science course, although the general approach could help improve such courses. It would be ideal for a college course in history of genetics or a course designed to teach non-science majors how science works or the rudiments of the genetics in a way that will help them as citizens. The approach aims to teach the processes of discovery, correction, and validation by utilizing illustrative episodes from the history of genetics. The episodes are treated in way that should foster understanding of basic questions about genes, the sorts of techniques used to answer questions about the constitution and structure of genes, how they function, and what they determine, and some of the major biological disagreements that arose in dealing with these questions. The material covered here could be connected to social and political issues raised by genetics, but these connections are not surveyed here. As it is, to cover this much territory, the article is limited to four major episodes from Mendel’s paper to the beginning of World War II. A sequel will deal with the molecularization of genetics and with molecular gene concepts through the Human Genome Project.
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Notes
In the concluding section of Bachelard (1934/1999), Gaston Bachelard wrote that we think scientific truth as the historical rectification of a long [train of] error. Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the relevance of Bachelard to this point.
By outlining the Mendelian laws this way, it is possible to set up a suitable exercise for students to try out the calculations for themselves for dihybrid and even trihybrid cases. Also, note that Mendel’s language was ambiguous about whether true-breeding plants had one factor or two, but his symbolism suggests that he may have thought that they only carried one factor, not two, but that sperm and egg each got one copy of that factor. For more on this see Müller-Wille and Orel (2007), Olby (1979, 1985) Origins of Mendelism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mendel claimed that there are as many factors as there are segregating traits that behaved in accordance with his laws.
Bateson provided many other examples to show that these examples are typical of a large class of cases affecting the form of organisms.
For an exemplary text comparing cytological (i.e., structural) knowledge of chromosomes and functional-genetic knowledge, and illustrating how each could be used to correct and improve the other, see (Darden 1991); for a recent anthology of historical and philosophical essays tracing these issues up to the beginnings of the human genome project see (Beurton et al. 2000).
Garland Allen (Allen 1979) sets an important part of the background regarding the turn to experiment to resolve biological disputes and the way the shift toward experiment affected the development of both embryology and genetics. For a useful reworking of Allen’s general views on these topics, see also a “Special Section on American Morphology at the Turn of the Century” in the Journal of the History of Biology (vol. 14, no. 1) edited by Jane Maienschein, Ronald Rainger, and Keith Benson, with contributions by each of the editors plus Garland Allen and Frederick B. Churchill. The topics covered there are more general than the title of the special section suggests.
Recall from point (3) in §3 that T. H. Morgan had been arguing against Mendelian theory as late as the middle of 1910. He had followed the Mendelian theory since the earliest days of the discovery, but argued that, in the absence of any cross-check on how many factors there are and where they are located, one could postulate any number of factors and then use them to predict any specific pattern of inheritance. Thus the discovery of the white-eyed fly, of criss-cross inheritance, and of the many other factors located on the X chromosome of drosophila convinced Morgan that this class of objections had been overcome and that Mendelian genetics (reinforced and developed in light of the experiments of his group and of many others) was both a practical and a well-supported theory. The literature on Morgan and the development of genetics is enormous, but some starting points are Allen (1978), Darden (1991), Gilbert (1978), Maienschein (1991), and Sturtevant (1959).
“What” should read “which”—RMB.
Bateson, Morgan, and a number of the other founders of genetics, had started their career as embryologists and were strongly influenced by embryology (Gilbert 1978). But Bateson was nearly unique as a geneticist who maintained this objection to the chromosomal theory of the gene after 1915. Most of those who raised this objection were embryologists. By and large the geneticists set it aside as something requiring future research. A few physiological geneticists and a few people who migrated from embryology to genetics, such as Boris Ephrussi, kept this objection alive within genetics, and sought to develop tools to investigate how genes influence development. For some starting points on Ephrussi, see (Burian 1999; Burian et al. 1988, 1991; Sapp 1987).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Kostas Kampourakis for the invitation to contribute this paper to this special issue of Science & Education and for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. I also appreciate the constructive criticisms of an anonymous referee and of James G. Lennox on an early draft of a related paper. These comments led to considerable improvements of the paper. All the remaining flaws are my responsibility.
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Appendix: A Note on Some Resources for Educators
Appendix: A Note on Some Resources for Educators
An especially valuable website, containing major documents bearing on the history of heredity and the development of genetics up to about 1940 is the ESP (Electronic Scholarly Publishing) project (http://www.esp.org/). The site provides useful timelines and excellent electronic reprints of numerous books and articles, including many cited in this paper, often with brief descriptions of their importance in their original context. The Mendelweb (http://www.mendelweb.org/) provides several useful versions of Mendel’s key paper plus a variety of useful commentaries. The best single technical history of genetics to 1940 is (Carlson 1966, but see also his more general text, Carlson 2004).
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Burian, R.M. On Gene Concepts and Teaching Genetics: Episodes from Classical Genetics. Sci & Educ 22, 325–344 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9367-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9367-y