Offers a deep and innovative understanding of our ways of thinking about heredity.

1. Introduction; 2. From reproduction and generation to heredity; 3. Faktoren in search of meaning; 4. The chromosome theory of inheritance; 5. Genes as the atoms of heredity; 6. Increasing resolving power; 7. Deducing genes from traits, inducing traits from genes; 8. What is true for E. coli is not true for the elephant; 9. Concluding comments; bibliography.