Epigenetics, Representation, and Society

In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The d...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Gadjev, Ilya (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Wiley-Blackwell [2017]
Dans: Zygon
Année: 2017, Volume: 52, Numéro: 2, Pages: 491-515
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Épigénétique / Hérédité / Philosophie sociale
RelBib Classification:AB Philosophie de la religion
ZA Sciences sociales
Sujets non-standardisés:B science and society
B ‘hard’ inheritance
B Epigenetics
B Representation
B ‘soft’ inheritance
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Résumé:In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘gene↔genetic plasticity↔phenotype↔environment’ tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contient:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/zygo.12343