MENDELS OPPOSITION TO EVOLUTION AND TO DARWIN

Although the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Me ndel's role in the origin of genetic theory, only one writer, L. A. Ca llender (1988), has concluded that Mendel was opposed to evolution, Ye t careful scrutiny of Mendel's Pisum paper, published in 1866, and of the time and circumstances in which it appeared suggests not only that it is antievolutionary in content, but also that it was specifically written in contradiction of Darwin's book The Origin of Species, publi shed in 1859, and that Mendel's and Darwin's theories, the two theorie s which were united in the 1940s to form the modern synthesis, are com pletely antithetical.