William Bateson and Mendel’s principles of heredity1

There are many definitions of genius, and none of them is satisfactory. Yet it is a quality that most of us can recognize when we come across it, even though we may not understand it. It is a quality which no one who had met and spoken with him would have denied to William Bateson. One felt at once that one was in the presence of an intensely virile personality. Physical features count for much, and Bateson’s were such as to have marked him out in any assembly. Yet, arresting as these were, the impression they conveyed was not so much of physical as of intellectual and spiritual power. Had his activities lain in literature or politics his features would have been familiar to all. By the choice of science for his life’s work he escaped that press publicity for which he had much contempt. So it has come about that, although the average educated man has heard his name, and in a vague way associates it with a remarkable growth in our knowledge of heredity, he has little idea of what this new knowledge means to mankind, and of the part that Bateson played in its acquisition. After all, this is not surprising when we call to mind how great is the mental inertia of a population, especially in habits of thought where pecuniary profit is not directly concerned. In spite of the magnificent advertisement from the churches it took some decades before the greater part of what we call the civilized world began to think in terms of evolution. It may be some decades yet before it begins to think in terms of heredity. Religion, law and politics adapt themselves but slowly to fresh thought, and perhaps, on the whole, it is well that this should be so

Art history · Biology · Contempt · Genius · Heredity · Political science · Politics · Population · Power (physics) · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Temptation · History · Law · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Social Psychology

• The professor and the pea

  Open Access•Gregory Radick•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2013

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