PMID: 11624207Oct 20, 2001Paper

The development of Francis Galton's ideas on the mechanism of heredity

Journal of the History of Biology
M Bulmer

Abstract

Galton greeted Darwin's theory of pangenesis with enthusiasm, and tried to test the assumption that the heredity particles circulate in the blood by transfusion experiments on rabbits. The failure of these experiments led him to reject this assumption, and in the 1870s he developed an alternative theory of heredity, which incorporated those parts of Darwin's theory that did not involve the transportation of hereditary particles throughout the system. He supposed that the fertilized ovum contains a large number of hereditary elements, which he collectively called the "stirp," a few of which are patent, developing into particular cell types, while the rest remain latent; the latent elements can be transmitted to the next generation, while the patent elements, with rare exceptions, cannot since they have developed into cells. The problem with this theory is that it does not explain the similarity between parent and child unless there is a high correlation between latent and patent elements. Galton probably came to realize this problem during his subsequent statistical work on heredity, and he quietly dropped the idea that patent elements are not transmitted in Natural Inheritance (1889). Galton thought that brothers and sisters ha...Continue Reading

Citations

Apr 24, 2008·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Yongsheng Liu
Aug 13, 2011·Theory in Biosciences = Theorie in Den Biowissenschaften·Nicholas D Holland
Jan 1, 2009·Journal of the History of Biology·Ricardo Noguera-Solano, Rosaura Ruiz-Gutiérrez
May 28, 2015·History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences·Richard Nash
Jul 16, 2021·American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics : the Official Publication of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics·Kenneth S Kendler

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