Rheinberger H J
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
C R Acad Sci III. 2000 Dec;323(12):1089-96. doi: 10.1016/s0764-4469(00)01267-1.
Carl Correns (1864-1933) came to recognize Mendel's rules between 1894 and 1900 while trying to find out the mechanism of xenia, that is, the direct influence of the fertilizing pollen on the mother plant in maize and peas among other species. In this paper, I am concerned with the ten years of Correns' work after the annus mirabilis of 1900 until 1910, when the main outlines of the new science of genetics had been established. It is generally assumed that after 1900 Correns quickly began probing the limits of Mendelian inheritance, both as far as the explanatory force of formal transmission genetics and the generality of Mendel's laws are concerned. A careful examination of his papers however shows that he was much more interested in the scope of Mendelian inheritance than in its limits. Even his work with variegated Mirabilis plants, which historiographical folklore still presents as a result of Correns' growing interest in cytoplasmic inheritance, can be shown to have been conducted to corroborate just the opposite, namely, the validity of the nuclear paradigm. The paper will show that Correns' research results in those years (among them the Mendelian inheritance of sex in higher plants) were the outcome of a complex experimental program which involved breeding experiments with dozens of different species.
卡尔·科伦斯（1864 - 1933）在1894年至1900年间试图找出异粉性的机制时，开始认识到孟德尔的规律，异粉性即受精花粉对玉米、豌豆等多种植物母本植株的直接影响。在本文中，我关注的是科伦斯在1900年这一奇迹之年之后到1910年的十年工作，到1910年时，遗传学这门新科学的主要轮廓已确立。人们通常认为，1900年之后，科伦斯很快就开始探究孟德尔遗传的局限性，这涉及形式传递遗传学的解释力以及孟德尔定律的普遍性。然而，仔细研读他的论文会发现，他对孟德尔遗传的范围比对其局限性更感兴趣。甚至他对杂色紫茉莉植株的研究，尽管史学界的说法仍将其视为科伦斯对细胞质遗传兴趣日增的结果，但实际上该研究是为了证实相反的观点，即核范式的有效性。本文将表明，科伦斯在那些年的研究成果（其中包括高等植物性别的孟德尔遗传）是一个复杂实验项目的结果，该项目涉及对数十个不同物种进行育种实验。
