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What, exactly, did Mendel's work contribute to science?

The brilliant monk's interest in how attributes in natural organisms are passed from parent to offspring was nothing new in the world. Ever since humans began domesticating animals and planting and harvesting crops, many thousands of years ago, this has been a matter of lively concern. But Mendel was the first to concentrate on one trait at a time and to describe the propagation of traits in mathematical terms. He cross-pollinated, for example, tall (TT) and dwarf (dd) pea plants. The first generation of hybrids consisted entirely of tall plants, because the dominant gene was present in all cases. However, the second generation, carrying both the dominant (T) and recessive (d) gene, yielded only 3 out of 4 tall plants (TT, Td, dT), with 1 out of 4 plants emerging as a physical dwarf (dd).

The legacy of this work includes not only subsequent advances in plant and animal hybridization, but the whole vast, complicated, fascinating, and potentially life-changing field of genetics. Like the Christian fathers of modern anatomy (Andreas Vesalius, 1514-1564), astronomy (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642), medicine (William Harvey, 1578-1630), chemistry (Robert Boyle, 1627-1691), microbiology (Antony van Leeuwenhoek, 1632-1723), and mechanistic physics (Isaac Newton, 1642-1727) who preceded him, Mendel subjected God's creation to close scrutiny, seeking the good of humankind through scientific research. (His concern for social improvement is reflected in a small way in his birth-village, Hyncice, whose fire station he originally equipped with a donation of 3,000 guilders.) And in that goal, he succeeded— "beyond all that he could ask or imagine"— though it was decades after his death before the true value of his work was recognized.

Gregor Mendel would no doubt be horrified by the manipulative uses to which some modern, ethically challenged technicians wish to put the knowledge he unlocked. But he would not back down from our right and duty to pursue, through science, morally responsible ways of fulfilling the Genesis command to "subdue the earth." Like those other Christian "scientific fathers," Mendel found in science a worthy Christian vocation.

Chris Armstrong is managing editor of Christian History magazine.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

More Christian History, including a list of events that occurred this week in the church's past, is available at ChristianHistory.net.Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine are also available.

Issue 76 of Christian History, "The Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution" has more on the "fathers" mentioned above.  Sample articles are available online.

The Counterbalance Meta-Library has more information on the "gene myth"— the belief of biological determinists that our genetic programming dictates everything we will become.

The site also has a section on leading Christians who see genetics as a positive enterprise—including Dr. Francis Collins, leading gene researcher and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH.

For a fascinating tour of the St. Thomas Abbey and Gregor Mendel's life and work, see the website for the Abbey's "Mendel Museum of Genetics."

Mendel's original paper and much more on the origins of classical genetics are available at Mendelweb.org.

Christian History Corner appears every Friday at ChristianityToday.com. Previous editions include:

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December (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46