Abstract
BY the term. “inheritance” we are accustomed to signify the obvious fact of the resemblance displayed by all living organisms between offspring and parents, as the direct outcome of the contributions received from the two sides of the pedigree at fertilisation; to indicate, in fact, owing to lack of knowledge of the workings of the hereditary process, merely the visible consequence—the final result of a chain of events. Now, however, that we have made a beginning in our analysis of the stages which culminate in the appearance of any character, a certain looseness becomes apparent in our ordinary use of the word “heredity,” covering as it does the two concomitant essentials, genetic potentiality and somajtic expression—a looseness which may lead us into the paradoxical statement tnat inheritance is wanting in a case in which, nevertheless, the evidence shows that the genetic constitution of the children is precisely like that of the parents. When we say that a character is inherited no ambiguity is involved, because the appearance of the character entails the inheritance of the genetic potentiality. But when a character is stated not to be inherited it is not thereby indicated whether this result is due to environmental conditions, to genetic constitution, or to both causes combined. That we are now able in some measure to analyse the genetic potentialities of the individual is due to one of those far-reaching discoveries which change our whole outlook, and bring immediately in their train a rapidly increasing array of new facts, falling at once into line with our new conceptions, or by some orderly and constant discrepancy pointing a fresh direction for attack.
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SAUNDERS, E. Ou Conceptions of the Processes of Heredity*. Nature 106, 224–227 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106224a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106224a0