3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

346 11 History and Philosophy of Biology—Mayr’s Third Synthesis
evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s and of post-synthesis developments. In Part
III the work of Mendel’s forerunners, of several species hybridizers and of plant
breeders is explained. These workers did not think in terms of variable populations
describing their results only qualitatively without calculating ratios. The species
question and his teacher F. Unger’s interest in variants inspired Gregor Mendel’s
work.Headoptedthemethodofpopulationanalysisandstudiedtensofthousands
of seeds and plants. Although cited several times, his publication of 1866 was
overlooked until it was rediscovered in 1900. Soft and hard inheritance and the
work of A. Weismann and H. de Vries during the late 19th century are discussed in
detail by Mayr as well as the rise of genetics and the chemical basis of inheritance
including the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. The author exposed
in this volume the historical and philosophical relations between systematics,
evolution and genetics. In addition, general historical issues are discussed in three
introductory chapters and in the epilogue.
Mayr had made particularly good progress with the manuscript during a half
year’s stay in Germany (Würzburg and Tübingen) in 1977. Originally he had
planned to follow up the first volume covering mostly the history of evolutionary
biology (ultimate causations) with a second volume dealing with the history of
functional biology (proximate causations).
“I stayed in Tübingen for about half a year in 1980 working very hard on
the history of physiology and embryology but after about seven months of work
I decided to abandon the project. When there were controversies in 1800 or 1850
in the field of physiology I simply didn’t know enough of physiology to get the
proper feeling for the nature of the controversy nor did I usually know how it
finally came out. I could have produced something strictly descriptive but not the
kind of interpretive story as I had done with the volume devoted to systematics,
evolution, and genetics.”
Despite the fact that he had abandoned the project of a second volume already
in 1980, in the Preface of the published volume of 1982, Mayr still expressed “his
hope to deal with the biology of ‘proximate’ (functional) causations in a later
volume that will cover physiology in all of its aspects, developmental biology, and
neurobiology” (pp. VII–VIII). Evidently the Preface had been written several years
prior to 1982 and was published unchanged.
From the Greeks to Darwin
The Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 427–347 B.C.) was a disaster for biology, Mayr
(1982d) concluded. His essentialistic concepts influenced this branch of the natural
sciences adversely for centuries. The rise of modern biological thought is, in part,
the emancipation from Platonic thinking. 2 On the other hand, Aristotle (384–
322 B.C.) has made greater contributions to biology than any other thinker before
Darwin. As an empiricist, Aristotle was the founder of the comparative method and
2 The history of essentialism is rather complex, because several early thinkers in Europe
had already objected to Platonic idealism a long time before Darwin (Winsor 2006: 3).