Reduction of Variability

Abstract

From a Biomechanical standpoint heredity is the transmission of genes, which under certain circumstances can influence developmental processes and in this way final qualities of the organisms. This conception of heredity is fundamentally different from the de Vries—Weismann conception of the process as a transmission of pangens, determinants, which would each directly call into being, directly determine a corresponding organ or quality. This last conception brought with it the necessity of assuming, that such determinants could exist in a definite latent, dormant state, namely in all those instances where we knew a certain inherited thing to be present without the corresponding quality with which it was commonly found associated, showing itself.