Johann Gregor Mendel was born in 1822 to a peasant family in a small village in Moravia. Much attention was devoted to his education. As it turned out, Mendel's education was affected by the pansophy teachings of the devout seventeenth-century pedagogue and philosopher Jan Amos Comenius who, in Descartes' words, “too closely combined human science and theology,” yet preached for the threefold virtue of “fullness, order and truth” (Orel, personal communication a). Mendel's interests were in natural history and agriculture. He pursued his studies at the Olomouc University in spite of severe economic difficulties. As he wrote in his curriculum vitae notes in 1850: “It was impossible for him to endure such exertion any further. Therefore, having finished his philosophical studies, he felt himself compelled to enter a station in life that would free him from the bitter struggle for existence. His circumstances decided his vocational choice. He requested and received in the year 1843 admission to the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Brno” (Orel, 1996, 43–44). This was a fortunate choice, primarily because the head of the monastery at the time was the abbot František Cyril Napp, a “scientist, secret freethinker, and an expert in state affairs and economics” (Peaslee and Orel, 2007).

MENDEL IN CONTEXT

Moravia of the first half of the nineteenth century was a prosperous center of industry and agriculture as well as of scientific activity.