Mendel’s «Units of Heredity»: Their Inglorious End and Second Birth

The paper is designed to give a comprehensive answer to the question of why none of the Mendel’s contemporaries could understand the meaning of his “laws”. The examination of the arguments commonly being adduced – such as the “non-respectableness” of the publication, the little-knownness of the author, or the unwonted style of his work – reveals their insufficiency and secondariness. It is demonstrated that the real causes of denying the “units of heredity” are the combinatorial language Mendel has introduced, the categoricity of his conclusions, and their immanent speculativeness. The authors disclose the permanent attributes of revolutionary idea – the new mode of thinking it carries with, the narrowed field of vision, and its substantial isolation from recognized facts, – which doom so idea to inescapable rejection.

Keywords: units of heredity, Mendel, new mode of thinking, conceptual revolution, causes of rejection.