Darwinian natural selection is sometimes pointed to as a late development, given that it could have been inferred by anyone who understood that certain traits are heritable. However, the fact that two people figured it out more or less independently at approximately the same time makes me think that it came at about the right time.
What about Mendelian Inheritance? It was initially discovered by Gregor Mendel in 1865, but it was seen as being a very narrow special case of genetics until about 1900, when de Vries, Correns and von Tschermak “rediscovered” his work. So that’s about 35 years during which the statistical laws of inheritance were published, but weren’t being used or built upon.
Darwinian natural selection is sometimes pointed to as a late development, given that it could have been inferred by anyone who understood that certain traits are heritable. However, the fact that two people figured it out more or less independently at approximately the same time makes me think that it came at about the right time.
What about Mendelian Inheritance? It was initially discovered by Gregor Mendel in 1865, but it was seen as being a very narrow special case of genetics until about 1900, when de Vries, Correns and von Tschermak “rediscovered” his work. So that’s about 35 years during which the statistical laws of inheritance were published, but weren’t being used or built upon.