Mendel and Darwin were contemporaries, with much overlap in their scientifically productive years. Available evidence shows that Mendel knew much about Darwin, whereas Darwin knew nothing of Mendel. Because of the fragmentary nature of this evidence, published inferences regarding Mendel’s views on Darwinian evolution are contradictory and enigmatic, with claims ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to outright rejection. The objective of this review is to examine evidence from Mendel’s published and private writings on evolution and Darwin, and the influence of the scientific environment in which he was immersed. Much of this evidence lies in Mendel’s handwritten annotations in his copies of Darwin’s books, which this review scrutinises in detail. Darwin’s writings directly influenced Mendel’s classic 1866 paper, and his letters to Nägeli. He commended and criticised Darwin on specific issues pertinent to his research, including the provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, the role of pollen in fertilisation, and the influence of “conditions of life” on heritable variation. In his final letter to Nägeli, Mendel proposed a Darwinian scenario for natural selection using the same German term for “struggle for existence” as in his copies of Darwin’s books. His published and private scientific writings are entirely objective, devoid of polemics or religious allusions, and address evolutionary questions in a manner consistent with that of his scientific contemporaries. The image that emerges of Mendel is of a meticulous scientist who accepted the tenets of Darwinian evolution, while privately pinpointing aspects of Darwin’s views of inheritance that were not supported by Mendel’s own experiments.

中文翻译：

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孟德尔和达尔文：解开一个顽固的谜团

孟德尔和达尔文是同时代的人，他们在科学上富有成就的年代有很多重叠之处。现有证据表明，孟德尔对达尔文了解很多，而达尔文对孟德尔一无所知。由于这一证据的零碎性质，已发表的关于孟德尔达尔文进化论观点的推论是矛盾和神秘的，其主张从热情接受到完全拒绝。这篇评论的目的是检查孟德尔关于进化论和达尔文的已发表和私人著作中的证据，以及他所处的科学环境的影响。大部分证据都存在于孟德尔在他的达尔文书籍副本中的手写注释中，本评论对其进行了详细审查。达尔文的著作直接影响了孟德尔 1866 年的经典论文，以及他给内格利的信。他在与达尔文研究相关的具体问题上赞扬和批评了达尔文，包括泛生论的临时假说、花粉在受精中的作用以及“生活条件”对遗传变异的影响。在他写给 Nägeli 的最后一封信中，孟德尔提出了一个达尔文主义的自然选择情景，使用了与他在达尔文著作副本中相同的德语术语“为生存而斗争”。他发表的和私人的科学著作完全客观，没有论战或宗教典故，并以与他的同时代科学人一致的方式解决进化问题。孟德尔的形象是一位一丝不苟的科学家，他接受了达尔文进化论的原则，