From linnaean species to Mendelian factors:: Elements of hybridism, 1751-1870

In 1979, Robert C. Olby published an article titled 'Mendel no Mendelian?', in which he questioned commonly held views that Gregor Mendel ( 1822-1884) laid the foundations for modern genetics. According to Olby, and other historians of science who have since followed him, Mendel worked within the tradition of so-called hybridists, who were interested in the evolutionary role of hybrids rather than in laws of inheritance. We propose instead to view the hybridist tradition as an experimental programme characterized by a dynamic development that inadvertently led to a focus on the inheritance of individual traits. Through a careful analysis of publications on hybridization by Carl Linnaeus ( 1707-1778), Joseph Gottlieb Koelreuter ( 1733-1806), Carl Friedrich Gartner ( 1772-1850), and finally Mendel himself, we will show that this development consisted in repeated reclassifications of hybrids to accommodate anomalies, which in the end allowed Mendel to draw analogies between whole organisms, individual traits, and 'elements' contained in reproductive cells. Mendel's achievement was a product of normal science, and yet a revolutionary step forward. This also explains why, in 1900, when the report he gave on his experiments was 'rediscovered', Mendel could be read as a 'Mendelian'.