Darwin's Theory of Evolution has faced many challenges since the theory was first presented in 1859. The recent challenges by creationists and intelligent design advocates are not even the most serious of these challenges. The most serious challenge to Darwinism was by scientists in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It resulted in a period called the "Eclipse of Darwinism" that lasted until about 1940. During this period, Darwinism fell out of favour amongst scientists. The problems of heredity, the impasse that Darwin had recognized when he published the Origin of Species, had finally caught up with the theory. Darwinism was rescued by modifying the original theory to include the work of Gregor Mendel. Darwin's Theory of Evolution, so often a symbol of the clash of religion and science, had been rescued by the work of a Roman Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel. The sponsoring organization for Mendel's research was an order of Monks, the Order of St. Augustine in Brno (Czech Republic).
By the turn of the twentieth century, Darwin's Theory of Evolution was already falling out of favour as an explanation for evolution. With good reason. Although Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was initially welcomed, there were two very big holes in the theory. One was the explosion of life forms in the early Cambrian period with no apparent transitional forms of life leading up to these species. The other was heredity. Darwin proposed that with the natural variations that occur in populations, any trait that is beneficial would make that individual more likely to survive and pass on the trait to the next generation. If enough of these selections occured on different beneficial traits you could end up with completely new species. But Darwin did not have an explanation for how the traits could be preserved over the succeeding generations. At the time, the prevailing theory of inheritance was that the traits of the parents were blended in the offspring. But this would mean that any beneficial trait would be diluted out of the population within a few generations. This is because most of the blending over the next generations would be with individuals that did not have the trait. Mendel had the answer to Darwin's impasse. Traits were not blended, but inherited whole. And because of Mendel's proposition of recessive and dominant traits, a trait that might disappear in one generation might reappear in the following generation. Mendel's work was incorporated into Darwin's original theory to give us our modern Neo-Darwinism.
Modern biographies of Mendel are generous in their praise of Gregor Mendel's patience and perception in choosing the pea plant as the subject of his studies and then following through for several years and thousands of crosses to eventually come up with his laws. These biographies might still not be generous enough. Mendel needed two years of work on the pea plants before he could he could even start his hybridization experiments. Mendel chose pea plants partly because they had easily identifiable features such as wrinked or round peas or yellow or green pea pods, that they can self-fertilize and it is easy to protect them from cross-fertilization. But he had a problem. If you self-fertilized some pea plants with yellow pods they would always produce pea plants with yellow pods even through more than one generation. But if you self-fertilized other pea plants with yellow pods they would produce mostly plants with yellow pods but some with green pods. Although the plants looked similar (same phenotype) they were obviously different genetically (different genotypes). Similar problems occurred with every trait that he was testing. Mendel knew he had to start with true-breeding plants which means that he had to produce a set of plants that when self-crossed would always produce the same phenotype. This took two years of work.
After developing his set of true-breeding plants, Mendel spent years making thousands of crosses and developed some laws from the observations. Some of Mendel's important discoveries were that these traits were inherited whole and that traits that seemed to disappear in one generation could reappear in another generation (because of recessive traits). He also discerned a mathematical relationship in the inheritance of dominant and recessive traits.
The fruits of Gregor Mendel's patient research was finally published in the the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn in 1866. No-one seemed to care. This important work was only cited in scientific literature three times in the next 35 years. Around the turn of twentieth century, Mendel's work was rediscovered by several biologists (Correns, deVries) and would develop into a completely new discipline within the field of biology (genetics). It would also help end the "eclipse of Darwinism". Neo-Darwinism would keep many of the original ideas presented by Darwin but use Mendel's genetic laws to help explain how beneficial traits could be passed on from generation to generation.
These discoveries would prove important to the resurrection of Darwin's theories. They would also prove important well beyond evolutionary theories, affecting many areas of biology and medicine. It affected the lives of billions of people by helping to develop new hybrid food strains that were either more productive, more nutritious, more disease resistant or had better taste. The Green Revolution and foods that we take for granted such as canola oil were possible in large part due to Mendel's work.
Even though Gregor Mendel was a monk, his work is rarely considered in debates on the relationship of the church and science. It is typically considered as a curiosity. Even when the church's role is explored, it is dismissed as being a passive source of funding for research. Richard Dawkins, a prominent critic of the church's and religion's role in society, presents this view in The God Delusion:
... Mendel, of course, was a religious man, an Augustinian monk; but that was in the nineteenth century. when becoming a monk was the easiest way for the young Mendel to pursue his science. For him, it was the equivalent of a research grant.
When Richard Dawkins and others ignore or dismiss the role of the church in Mendel's research they are ignoring the obvious. Augustinian monasteries have never been known for their democratic management techniques. How Mendel spent his day was determined by the 'rule' of the religious order and the abbot of the monastery. If Mendel was spending a lot of time studying heredity it is because it was one of his responsibilities. The abbot of the monastery, a student of heredity, had conducted research on heredity before Mendel had arrived. Mendel took over the monastery's experimental garden in 1846. His predecessor at the garden, Matthew Klacel, was also studying heredity and evolution. Klacel had a special interest in the study of peas, perhaps influencing Mendel to continue the study. As Mendel was developing his theories he would have been able to bounce his ideas off his friend, Klacel, and other friars known to be interested in botany [_1_] . There was also a physical record of the monastery's commitment to research . There were two different one hectare plots devoted to heredity research and a greenhouse that enabled Mendel to develop controls for his studies.
Would anyone else have supported Mendel's work at that time? Certainly not the established scientific community. This community only cited his work three times in the next 35 years. The academic community would not have had the patience to wait for the fruit of Mendel's work. Mendel took over the monastery's experimental garden in 1846. His paper was published in 1866.
Dawkins does provide us with an interesting question. If the church's contribution to the final discovery of Mendel's Laws of genetics is not considered significant to the debate on church and science, what contributions would be considered significant? We must remember that the monastery tasked several different researchers (including Mendel) over a 30-year period to study heredity, allocated large plots of land within the monastery for this research, and used monastery funds to build a greenhouse which was used to develop controls for Mendel's research. These weren't Mendel's decisions because Mendel was not the abbot. Before Mendel, reports of European monastic experiments in heredity had gone back at least 1100 years, with the experiments of the monks of the St. Hubert monastery that is supposed to have resulted in the modern bloodhound breed. If the church's involvement here is not significant other than as a 'source of research grants', then perhaps Dawkins and other conflict theorists have set the bar so high that it guarantees that no involvement of the church in any scientific advance will ever be considered significant. Dawkins may have engineered the discussion so that he will always win, but no-one will end up wiser for it.
Evolution is a favourite example for those that believe in an inherent conflict between science and religion. And it is Darwin that is typically the focus of these discussions. But current evolutionary theory doesn't just derive from Darwin, but also from Gregor Mendel, a Roman Catholic monk. It is tempting for conflict theorists to disassociate Mendel from his role as a monk and treat his work as an individual achievement. But monks live in a community. In a community you must carry the weight assigned to you. The work that led to the discovery of laws of genetics was his weight.