Neo-Darwinism is simply another name for “Synthetic Evolution”, the modernised and made over theory we briefly discussed earlier which attempts to blend Darwin’s original theory with Gregor Mendel’s genetic discoveries.

Phenotype and Genotype
In modern parlance, what Mendel discovered was that the physical traits of organisms, their “phenotype”, is controlled by the genes they inherit from their parents, their “genotype”. Although organisms such as dogs and cats carry two genes for each characteristic in their genotype, one from each parent, only the dominant genes manifests themselves in the outward appearance, the phenotype.

[Ed: Am I right in thinking, G-Man, that the terms phenotype and genotype were invented by Wilhelm Johannsen, the man who also invented the term “gene”?]

If genes were totally invariant, and no mutations were to occur, no variation would be possible in populations even over many generations, other than that created by remixes of the existing genes.

Mendel’s peas, for example, carried two genes for height, and two genes only, thereby causing their offspring to be either tall (T) or dwarf (t) – with tall being the dominant factor.

What Mendel’s inspired work demonstrated was not a magical mechanism to fuel evolution, but an inherent stability, whereby the genes acquired by offspring are simply a random mix of genes acquired from ancestors. As we now know, of course, and as Lamarck evidently suspected, a mutational mechanism has been engineered into all organisms which allows them to respond and adapt to the needs of new environments – manifesting traits not logically present in the parental genes.

These constructive and complex mutations, which have been the stuff of plant and animal breeding throughout the centuries, should not be confused with the tiny puppy-litter type variations that Darwin hoped could be accumulated ad infinitum.

All Neo-Darwinism does is assume that Mendel’s hereditary units, now called genes, are prone to DNA copying errors each time they replicate themselves in the process of cell division. Consequently the incredible complexity and variety of life on earth is attributed to the accidental accumulation of zillions of random copying errors. Even dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists are finding such nonsense very hard to swallow as they daily discover more and more of the mind-boggling complexity for their pet theory to explain.

Binomial Notation
To continue, the brilliant Mendel realized that each pea plant he crossed contained two “units” of heredity for each trait, which we shall now call genes for convenience. Thus, using the “binomial” notation system he invented, the genotype of pure breed tall plants would be written TT and that of a pure dwarf as tt.

[Ed: By “crossing” you mean he took male pollen from a flower on a pure tall pea plant and daubed it on the female stigma of a dwarf plant, or vice versa. Right, G-Man? Then covered them up to keep the bees out in case they messed it all up with pollen from somewhere else.]

Mendel realized that only one of the two genes in each parent can be passed on in sexual reproduction, so that crossing a pure tall pea plant (TT) with a pure dwarf (tt) would produce “daughters” with seeds having the following identical genotypes hidden away inside them: Tt, Tt, Tt, Tt. In other words, all the seeds of this “first filial generation”, known as F1 hybrids had the same genetic make up (Tt), at least with regard to height.

Dominant and Recessive Genes
Mendel found, however, that although each of the four hybrids contained a (t) gene, they all produced peas that grew to be tall (T) plants. The reason he realized was that the tall gene was “dominant”, as he described it, and the dwarf gene (t) was “recessive”

In this way, Mendel was able to explain why a trait, such as dwarfing, could sometimes mysteriously appear by the crossing of tall plants.

Things became very interesting when two of these F1 hybrid plants were crossed – i.e. Tt with Tt – because this time the possible genotypes combinations of the daughters became: TT, Tt, tT, tt. By this time, the brilliant monk also realized that he was dealing with matters of chance, and that in order to obtain the reliable statistics required to test his hypothesis he had to grow hundreds of plants, not just a dozen or so – in which case he could predict that 25% of the daughters’ genotypes would be pure tall (TT), 50% would be mixed (Tt and tT), and 25% would be pure dwarf (tt). This he did repeatedly over a number of years growing thousands of plants in order to confirm his findings.

Notice that because of the dominance factor, three seeds out of four of these hybrids (those with TT, Tt and tT genes) would grow tall, and one in four (having only tt genes) would produce dwarf plants.

Mendel’s Laws
Determined genius that he was, Mendel then proceeded to consider how combinations of traits, such as height with colour, would be inherited. Although the mathematics became more complicated and the logistics very demanding, Mendel was able to demonstrate two important facts, or “laws”, as follows:

The first law, the law of “Segregation”, simply states that the two parental genes for any trait have equal chance of being passed on in reproduction, so that a Tt hybrid had an equal chance in the fertilization process of passing on the T gene or the t gene – just like tossing a coin to get a head or a tail. . [Ed: Am I right in thinking, G-Man, that Mendel was the first person to apply statistical methods like this in science, basing his measurements and conclusions on large samples of plant, rather than just a handful which would have given unreliable results?]

The second law, the law of “Independent Assortment”, simply says that the genes for various traits all operate independently – so that pea plants could be tall and purple or tall and green, or dwarf and purple or dwarf and green. The genes did not interfere with each other.

The Evolutionary Rainbow
Thus Mendel had disproved the ancient “blending theory” of inheritance that had bothered Darwin. Traits were either passed on or not passed on – a kind of digital system, like the 0 and 1 binary system used in computer code. They did not get mixed up and diluted, like mixing coloured paints. No wonder evolutionists were excited when three of them independently re-discovered Mendel’s writings some years after his death – hoping that Mendel’s insights would lead them closer to the end of the evolutionary rainbow.

Although he himself remained in scientific obscurity, Mendel was well aware of Darwin’s ideas. As the comment quoted earlier and repeated here suggests, his understanding of genetics coupled with his knowledge of Genesis told him that Darwin’s evolutionary theory was complete nonsense, saying as we saw earlier, Quote: “No one will seriously maintain that in the open country the development of plants is ruled by other laws than in the garden bed. Here, as there, changes of type must take place if the conditions of life be altered, and the species possesses the capacity of fitting itself to its new environment. [However,] nothing justifies the assumption that the tendency to form varieties increases so extraordinarily that the species speedily lose all stability, and their offspring diverge into an endless series of extremely variable forms.”

Human Nature at Work
Mendel’s personal trials and tribulations and the astonishing diligence and determination of this lone genius over a period of some eight or nine years are beautifully described by Robin Henig in her book “A Monk and Two Peas”. [Ed: Is it really true he smoked 20 cigars a day to try to lose weight, G-Man?]

As she explains, real progress in understanding genetics by the scientific community at large began to take place around 1900 when, as just noted, three leading biologists re-discovered Mendel’s writings independently, and set out to repeat and improve on his work.

Henig’s extensive research leads her to suspect that all three men made their own “discoveries” after reading Mendel’s papers – rather than before, despite their having claimed to simply having had their own brilliant findings confirmed by reading Mendel later on.

In fact, in describing the undignified scramble of biologists to attain fame and possibly fortune by being the first to nail the genetic problems that had puzzled Darwin, Henig feels called on to employ words such as arrogance, frenzy, anger, fury, sarcasm, rage, accusations and even murderous. .[Ed: P’raps they didn’t have any white coats in those days, G-Man. I’m sure it would have made a difference.]

[Ed: It is interesting, G-Man, that a copy of Mendel’s historic paper was found amongst Charles Darwin’s personal effects, but the fact that the page edges of the primitive publication had never been cut showed that he had never got around to reading it. Might have changed history if he had – if his maths could have stood it, that is. ]]

Co-Dominance
As often happens in scientific matters, however, the situation with regard to heredity was not as simple as it first appeared – and although Mendel had made some amazing basic discoveries of how both plants and animals inherit and pass on traits, it was found when others tried to repeat his experiments using different plants, that there were many exceptions to the basis rules.

Some cattle, for example, have “co-dominant” genes, so that if a “red” shorthorn bull, for example, is crossed with a “white” cow, the calves will be “roan”, a mixed colour due to their possessing a mixture of both red and white hairs. Mendel’s basic statistics still apply however, Co-dominance is apparently caused by additional genes that interact, in this case, with the action of the red and white hair colour genes.

Sex Linkage
In some organisms, such as the fruit fly, the inheritance of certain traits has been found to be linked to sex, causing the male and females to differ in various ways – and as we saw earlier, French scientists have discovered other situations where Mendel’s laws appear to be violated in a mysterious fashion, such as offspring acquiring traits for which neither parent has the relevant genes, an apparent impossibility.

As already stated, Mendel’s discoveries simply demonstrate that organisms are inherently stable and invariant, subject only to the sudden appearance of the mysterious complex and meaningful variations known as mutations – variation within the Genesis kind.

Fortune Favours the Brave
It is now known that genes operate independently if they are located on different chromosomes – and the amazing fact is that the seven visible traits that Mendel investigated in peas are in fact separately located on the seven different chromosomes that the pea plant possesses. He was, therefore, astonishingly fortunate in both his choice of plant and also the traits he chose to study. [Ed: Isn’t it possible, G-Man, that Mendel did try some other traits but found the results too complicated to understand? And do you think he might have had divine guidance anyway – after all, he must have prayed a lot about his work being a monk?]