Blending inheritance

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In early evolutionary biology, a certain assumption about the course of inheritance was called blending inheritance , for which there is no generally valid German equivalent. This assumption was opposed to the hypothesis of particulate inheritance ("particular inheritance"); Both were of great historical importance, as central conceptual and theoretical assumptions were derived from them, including the structure of the theory of evolution itself. For a long time there was a scientific dispute about the course of inheritance, which was based on different speculations about the units of the genetic make-up .

1. The hypothesis of blending inheritance implied that the characteristics of both parents were mixed in the offspring. According to this hypothesis, each descendant receives its properties mixed in a similar way to the way two liquids mix with one another.
2. The alternative hypothesis of a particulate inheritance stated that the characteristics of both parents do not mix, but only combine anew: either a descendant inherits a parental characteristic or does not inherit it.

With the discovery of DNA as the carrier of genetic information, this historical dispute was resolved in favor of the second hypothesis and has since played no role in evolutionary biology.

Charles Darwin was a believer in blending inheritance.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David Galton, Did Darwin read Mendel? , QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, Volume 102, 2009, pp. 587-589