hybrid trait = Hybriden-Merkmals See p. 10, s. 12.
parental characteristic = Stamm-Character See p. 7, s. 8 on the noun Character and p. 5, s. 10 on the prefix Stamm-.
double meaning = doppelte Bedeutung Both Bateson and Sherwood have “significance”. As the next sentence makes clear, the “meaning” or Bedeutung of traits was not exhausted by their manifest qualities, but importantly by their behaviour in succeeding generations also. Bedeutung was, and continues to be, a term with a very broad meaning, despite Gottlob Frege’s attempt in 1892 to restrict it to the extension of terms. It invokes connotations of contents that are subject to interpretation (such as dreams), but also of special importance, authority, or weight. Doppelte Bedeutung can also mean ambivalence, but this is clearly not what Mendel has in mind here, since he claims in the next sentence that “parental” and “hybrid traits” can be distinguished clearly. It is notable, that he is not making any attempt here to reduce the “meaning” of traits to underlying, cellular dispositions. He explicates the “double meaning” of dominant traits solely with reference to traits and their behaviour in succeeding generations (see p. 15, s. 3). For Mendel, being hybrid does therefore not designate an overall organic state, brought about by the mixture of two species, and affecting all future offspring. In fact, hybridity is not necessarily inherited by offspring, and many early commentators remarked on this as a unique feature of Mendel’s theory of hybridisation; thus William Bateson, Mendel’s Principles of Heredity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1902), p. 55, appends the following note to this sentence: “This paragraph presents the view of the hybrid·character as something incidental to the hybrid, and not “transmitted” to it — a true and fundamental conception here expressed probably for the first time”.
dominating = dominirende See p. 10, s. 14.
hybrid trait = Hybriden-Merkmals See p. 10, s. 12.
parental characteristic = Stamm-Character See p. 7, s. 8 on the noun Character and p. 5, s. 10 on the prefix Stamm-.
double meaning = doppelte Bedeutung Both Bateson and Sherwood have “significance”. As the next sentence makes clear, the “meaning” or Bedeutung of traits was not exhausted by their manifest qualities, but importantly by their behaviour in succeeding generations also. Bedeutung was, and continues to be, a term with a very broad meaning, despite Gottlob Frege’s attempt in 1892 to restrict it to the extension of terms. It invokes connotations of contents that are subject to interpretation (such as dreams), but also of special importance, authority, or weight. Doppelte Bedeutung can also mean ambivalence, but this is clearly not what Mendel has in mind here, since he claims in the next sentence that “parental” and “hybrid traits” can be distinguished clearly. It is notable, that he is not making any attempt here to reduce the “meaning” of traits to underlying, cellular dispositions. He explicates the “double meaning” of dominant traits solely with reference to traits and their behaviour in succeeding generations (see p. 15, s. 3). For Mendel, being hybrid does therefore not designate an overall organic state, brought about by the mixture of two species, and affecting all future offspring. In fact, hybridity is not necessarily inherited by offspring, and many early commentators remarked on this as a unique feature of Mendel’s theory of hybridisation; thus William Bateson, Mendel’s Principles of Heredity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1902), p. 55, appends the following note to this sentence: “This paragraph presents the view of the hybrid·character as something incidental to the hybrid, and not “transmitted” to it — a true and fundamental conception here expressed probably for the first time”.