Article ID: CBB001422092

The History and Reception of Charles Darwin's Hypothesis of Pangenesis (2014)

unapi

This paper explores Charles Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis through a popular and professional reception history. First published in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), pangenesis stated that inheritance can be explained by sub-cellular “gemmules” which aggregated in the sexual organs during intercourse. Pangenesis thereby accounted for the seemingly arbitrary absence and presence of traits in offspring while also clarifying some botanical and invertebrates' limb regeneration abilities. I argue that critics largely interpreted Variation as an extension of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), while pangenesis was an extension of natural selection. Contrary to claims that pangenesis was divorced from natural selection by its reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters, pangenesis's mid nineteenth-century reception suggests that Darwin's hypothesis responded directly to selection's critics. Using Variation's several editions, periodical reviews, and personal correspondence I assess pangenesis popularly, professionally, and biographically to better understand Variation's impact on 1860s and 70s British evolutionism and inheritance.

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Authors & Contributors
Partridge, Derek
Wright, Jeffrey Thomas
Varno, Theodore James
Pereira Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr
Travis, Anthony S.
Theunissen, Bert
Concepts
Evolution
Natural selection
Darwinism
Species concept (biology)
Heredity
Explanation; hypotheses; theories
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Southeast Asia
Institutions
United States. Dept. of Agriculture
Linnean Society of London
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