Abstract Summary
My paper will demonstrate how the character and the content of a discipline at a moment that it seems to have become a solid and accepted one, are still under vivid discussion. When the Fifth international meeting of geneticists in 1927 in Berlin took place, participants felt that genetics was now an established and accepted discipline. The organizer, the German Ernst Baur, stated that it had grown from an unimportant outpost to one of the most important biological disciplines. This importance was reflected in its relevance for eugenics and medicine and for the breeding of useful plants and animals. According to the British geneticist Reginald Punnett, genetics had gained a central position in biology thanks to its interdisciplinary character: it linked systematics, physiology, biochemistry, and Entwicklungsmechanik (developmental mechanics). Others argued, in turn, that its focus and techniques had become too narrow and that it needed to broaden its scope to be able to answer relevant questions. According to the Austrian Richard von Wettstein, genetics should step out of the narrow Mendelian framework to explain evolution and to include plasmatic inheritance and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The German Richard Goldschmidt argued that not only the transmission of genetic factors but also their action through development had to be taken into account. Must the conclusion be that an established discipline can only remain strong when its adherents are conscious that its content and character are in a constant state of flux?
