Mendel's Analytical and Empirical Approach

Mendel chose two sharply contrasting traits for each character he studied, which made it logical to assume that two distinct hereditary factors were involved. In the F1 generation the recessive trait and its underlying factor did not vanish - they were simply hidden (masked) by the dominant factor, only to reappear in about one quarter of the F2 offspring once the F1 heterozygotes' alleles segregated randomly into gametes. Mendel was the first scientist to bring this kind of quantitative, statistical analysis to a biological experiment, and his data are fundamentally about the proportions of offspring rather than any single cross's outcome. His overall approach - carefully planning experiments to work out the actual relationships governing heredity, rather than starting f …