ABSTRACT
Gregor Mendel, botanist, monk and teacher, is the man responsible for much of our modern-day understanding of inheritance. Working in the nineteenth century, he spent many hours in the Augustinian Abbey gardens, in what is now the Czech Republic, transferring pollen between thousands of pea plants (Pisum sativum) using nothing but a paint brush. The story of how the chromosome theory of inheritance came about illustrates some important principles in the way scientific knowledge is generated. Science is foremost an empirical endeavour where knowledge is generated by scientists observing and manipulating the natural world using a diversity of methods. The primary purpose of scientific inquiry then is not to develop an understanding of concepts such as atoms or cells necessarily, although it could be, it is an education into the practice of science itself that allows students to experience and become acquainted with the ‘rules of the game’, often referred to as norms.
