Chapter the Second
Visitors

Dalton and Darwin


Reluctantly Brown agreed. "Indeed, no," he said in his strange, bookish German, "When our good friend Otto told us of your interests, we very much wanted to meet you."
"My friends are members of the British Association," Grunewald added with some pride. Membership in the British Association was a rare honor for a scientist, and even in Brno, Mendel was well aware that it took singular achievement to be nominated. He looked at his two guests with more respect.
"Sam, here, corresponds regularly with Joseph Hooker," Brown informed them, using the name of a famous British scientist, "and his father knew John Dalton personally."

At the mention of Dalton's name, Mendel's respect deepened. Since his days at the Gymnasium, Mendel had developed a strong interest in meteorology. As part of his examination for a teaching certificate, he had been asked to write two essays. One of them, set by Professor Baumgarten of the University of Vienna, required the candidate to explain the mechanical and chemical properties of air and the properties of wind. In this essay Mendel had predicted the use of telegraph (then a new means of communication) in gathering data for weather forecasts, and also the work of John Dalton.

Although he had been dead for about 20 years, Dalton's work was one of the corner stones of the debate currently raging about the nature of the atom. Working in Manchester, England (where he met Gidding's father), Dalton had been an avid studier of weather. Many believed that his 'atomist' views stemmed from his attempts to explain the compound nature of the atmosphere and the gases therein. To Mendel, Dalton was more than a hero.
"Did you ever meet Dalton?" he couldn't help asking Sam, and waited eagerly for the translation.
"Once or twice," came the reply, "but I was only a boy at the time. He occasionally stayed at our house, but I don't remember him very well."

For the first time Brother Joseph entered the conversation. As usual he was reluctant to impose himself into the discussions of others, but he had caught an earlier remark by Brown.
"You say that Herr Giddings writes letters to Herr Doktor Professor Hooker?" he asked timidly, "does he, perhaps, know anything about the famous 1860 meeting of the British Association in Oxford?"
"Yes," shouted Klacel, eagerly, "that was when William Draper from the University of the City of New York spoke." Anything American interested Brother Matthew. "Professor Draper has written extensively about the intellectual development taking place here in Europe".
"Also, it was when Professor Daubeny from Oxford spoke on the final causes of sexuality in plants," Brother Joseph reminded everyone, finally pulling the topic of conversation back to botany and the subject of most interest to him; the mechanism of heredity.

But his attempt was doomed. "I was at that meeting," Giddings laughed, "it was one of the longest and liveliest meetings I ever attended."
With Brown translating, Sam Giddings described the famous Oxford meeting. "Your friend Draper spoke on Friday, but the real fun started on Saturday, when 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce rose to give the 'official' Church position. Although Mr Darwin was not present, his views on Evolution turned the whole meeting into one raging debate on the origin of species." He looked at Mendel. "You will have read about Mr Darwin's work?"
Mendel shook his head. "I am not familiar with the details," he said diplomatically, for Mendel neither knew or cared much about the theories of evolutionary change.

Klacel, however, knew something about the subject. "The English Church opposes Herr Darwin's ideas, does it not?"
It was Sam Giddings turn to shake his head, "No, no, not at all. Bishop Wilberforce speaks only for himself, and very badly at that. During his rebuttal of Draper he said nothing that makes sense. Soapy Sam is a gifted public speaker, but he is no scientist and no naturalist. There must have been 1,000 people in the library that day to hear him ridicule Darwin, but, even after Lady Brewster fainted, he said nothing that was not empty of content and downright unfair."
"Not like here," Grunewald could not help interjecting, "here in Brno we pride ourselves on scientific objectivity. You would not find Abbot Napp taking such a position."
In this, at least, Herr Otto Grunewald was correct. The contrast between the position taken by Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce towards the revolutionary ideas raised by Darwin's book on -the mechanism of evolutionary change, and Abbot Napp's support of Mendel (and even Klacel!), could not have been more marked. Even Klacel agreed.