Rasta

Hard to say. Racism was the norm in Darwin's day.

Mike McClure

Racism???

Rasta

Am I speaking Chinese?

ghostexorcist

Here is the type of tool use I am referring to. I would say witnessing this first hand would have definitely effected those scientists who were holding out against Darwin's work (depending on the level of their faith).

Bish

Seeing chimps use tools is one thing. Imagine if they had seen birds use them.

Mike McClure

There is nothing really radical about Darwinism. Nothing really new. Darwin was just at the right time and place. It was just a theory because he knew what, but he didn't know how. Mendel's genetics was the how. You put the two together and you have something. I don't see where racism effects that.

Zarin

Racism and an imperfect understanding of evolution and genetics was at the heart of National Socialism. The DNA molecule had not yet been discovered. And with the discovery of DNA a better tool for understanding evolution in living systems became more understandable. However, our knowledge of DNA is not yet complete.

Zarin

For all we know Darwin may have been familiar with Mendel. Most educated people in England, concerned with biology, were aware of Mendel and Darwin was a biologist. However, Mendel's theories were how traits were transported between various species of plants. Not how they changed due to isolation or evolution.

Mike McClure

I know of no contemporary of Mendel in England that was aware of him.

Zarin

You are correct. Mendel's work was not recognized until the 20th century. So very few people in the 19th century knew of his work. And Charles Darwin was not believed to have been aware of Mendel. However, Darwin's theory of the origin of species was about the developement of traits through isolation and specifically the principles of evolution, while Mendel was primarily about the inheritance of various traits from combined donor plants. Mendel had developed the concept of dominant and recessive traits in genetics. Darwin was more about why entirely new characteristics occurred. Ones that had not occurred previously in a species and why such traits continued to successfully do so. Mendel was about why characteristics already existing were transported between two various plant species. Knowledge of Mendel's work might have assisted Darwin in his explanation of this particular "inheritance" phenomena which Darwin unsuccessfully tried to explain as "pangenesis."
Mendel was the progenitor of the science of genetics, while Darwin was the progenitor of the science of evolution.
Once the DNA molecule was discovered in the later half of the 20th Century, the two theories were more beautifully explained and more readily combined.