Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, PO Box 7, 00014, Helsinki, Finland.
Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK), PO Box 4, Kőszeg, 9731, Hungary.
J Hist Biol. 2022 Oct;55(3):495-536. doi: 10.1007/s10739-022-09678-5. Epub 2022 Jun 7.
The upheavals of late eighteenth century Europe encouraged people to demand greater liberties, including the freedom to explore the natural world, individually or as part of investigative associations. The Moravian Agricultural and Natural Science Society, organized by Christian Carl André, was one such group of keen practitioners of theoretical and applied scientific disciplines. Headquartered in the "Moravian Manchester" Brünn (nowadays Brno), the centre of the textile industry, society members debated the improvement of sheep wool to fulfil the needs of the Habsburg armies fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Wool, as the raw material of soldiers' clothing, could influence the war's outcome. During the early nineteenth century, wool united politics, economics, and science in Brno, where breeders and natural scientists investigated the possibilities of increasing wool production. They regularly discussed how "climate" or "seed" characteristics influenced wool quality and quantity. Breeders and academics put their knowledge into immediate practice to create sheep with better wool traits through consanguineous matching of animals and artificial selection. This apparent disregard for the incest taboo, however, was viewed as violating natural laws and cultural norms. The debate intensified between 1817 and 1820, when a Hungarian veteran soldier, sheep breeder, and self-taught natural scientist, Imre (Emmerich) Festetics, displayed his inbred Mimush sheep, which yielded wool extremely well suited for the fabrication of light but strong garments. Members of the Society questioned whether such "bastard sheep" would be prone to climatic degeneration, should be regarded as freaks of nature, or could be explained by natural laws. The exploration of inbreeding in sheep began to be distilled into hereditary principles that culminated in 1819 with Festetics's "laws of organic functions" and "genetic laws of nature," four decades before Gregor Johann Mendel's seminal work on heredity in peas.
18 世纪后期欧洲的动荡鼓励人们要求更大的自由，包括自由探索自然世界，无论是作为个人还是作为调查协会的一部分。由克里斯蒂安·卡尔·安德烈组织的摩拉维亚农业和自然科学协会就是这样一个热衷于理论和应用科学学科的团体。该协会的总部位于纺织业中心的布尔诺（现在的布尔诺）的“摩拉维亚曼彻斯特”，协会成员讨论了改进羊毛以满足在拿破仑战争中作战的哈布斯堡军队的需求。羊毛作为士兵衣物的原材料，可以影响战争的结果。在 19 世纪早期，羊毛将政治、经济和科学联合在布尔诺，那里的饲养员和自然科学家研究了增加羊毛产量的可能性。他们经常讨论“气候”或“种子”特征如何影响羊毛质量和数量。饲养员和学者将他们的知识立即付诸实践，通过动物近亲交配和人工选择创造出具有更好羊毛特征的绵羊。然而，这种对乱伦禁忌的明显无视被视为违反自然规律和文化规范。1817 年至 1820 年期间，这场争论愈演愈烈，当时一位匈牙利退伍军人、绵羊饲养员和自学成才的自然科学家伊姆雷（埃默里希）·费斯特蒂茨展示了他的近亲繁殖的米姆什羊，这种羊的羊毛非常适合制作轻便但结实的衣服。协会成员质疑这种“杂种羊”是否容易受到气候退化的影响，是否应该被视为自然的怪胎，或者是否可以用自然规律来解释。对绵羊近亲繁殖的探索开始被提炼成遗传原理，最终在 1819 年费斯特蒂茨的“有机功能定律”和“自然遗传定律”中达到顶峰，这比格雷戈尔·约翰·孟德尔关于豌豆遗传的开创性工作早了四十年。
