Real Science, Real Precision

One hundred years ago, the first great advances in genetics, based on Mendel's work, were made. So were advances in physics, chemistry. All of these to me were pure, real science that really made leaps forward. These men knew their math, and basic chemistry so well, that they were nothing but precise. They, unlike us, who are dependant on their great stores of knowledge, had to stab in the dark in the right place, and they did so well, that we don't even think to thank them. Their biology classes did not have the information they pioneered for us today. They literally had to do guesswork to explain what they were seeing. We need to quit being so arrogant about the knowledge we so easily obtain today because of their hard efforts.

For example:

In 1900, when Mendel’s work was rediscovered and biologists began to apply his principles of heredity, the relation between genes and chromosomes was still unclear. The theory that genes are located on chromosomes (the chromosome theory of heredity) was developed in the early 1900s by Walter Sutton, then a graduate student at Columbia University. Through the careful study of meiosis in insects, Sutton documented the fact that each homologous pair of chromosomes consists of one maternal chromosome and one paternal chromosome. Showing that these pairs segregate independently into gametes in meiosis, he concluded that this process is the biological basis for Mendel’s principles of heredity. German cytologist and embryologist Theodor Boveri came to similar conclusions at about the same time.

Pierce, Benjamin A.. Genetics (Kindle Locations 3913-3914). W. H. Freeman. Kindle Edition. 

Pierce, Benjamin A.. Genetics (Kindle Locations 3908-3913). W. H. Freeman. Kindle Edition. 

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