Mendel and Weismann’s heredity science supplied nativism’s first new European underpinning since Darwin

Evidence

The new science of heredity came out of Europe about 1900 and formed the first substantial contribution of European thought to American nativism after the time of Darwin. The study of inheritance suddenly leaped into prominence and assumed a meaningful pattern from the discovery of the long-unnoticed work of Gregor Mendel and its convergence with August Weismann’s theory of germinal continuity. Together, these hypotheses demonstrated the transmission from generation to generation of characteristics that obeyed their own fixed laws without regard to the external life of the organism. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 894

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Darwinism prepared but did not directly cause racial nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 787

Broader Connections

• Darwinism prepared but did not directly cause racial nativism #complicates (0.78) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 787