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Developmental Narratives: How We Think that Organisms Use Genetic and Epigenetic Information

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De-Sequencing

Part of the book series: Health, Technology and Society ((HTE))

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Abstract

Biological explanations of how genes work in our bodies, and how our bodies develop from their embryonic states, have implications for our self-understanding. Are our bodies essentially products of our genes, biomachines produced by a genetic program, or developmental systems which are in relation to others and responsive to the environment we live in? This chapter examines current ideas about the role of genes in development and ageing, especially focusing on epigenetics. It argues that there is a continuity of meanings between ideas of organic responsivity and psychocorporeal responsivity, i.e. between developmental genetics and phenomenology of embodiment. It postulates that philosophy should discuss biology from the perspective of developmental narratives, while being attentive to the life-world meanings they contain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Nelkin and Lindee (1995) and Rothman (2001).

  2. 2.

    Introduction to her chapter ‘Psychocorporeity, the Autonomous Will, and Living Organ Donation’, published in German as Meyers (2016). I quote from her original manuscript.

  3. 3.

    Crick (1958, pp. 152ff.), quoted after Griffiths and Stotz (2013, p. 40).

  4. 4.

    For a slightly different terminological classification, see Griffiths and Stotz (2013, p. 112) and Jablonka and Lamb (2002).

  5. 5.

    See, for example, the NIH Genetics Home Reference: What is a genome? https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/hgp/genome, accessed 3 July 2019.

  6. 6.

    See Griffiths and Stotz (2013), Schmidt (2013), Shapiro (2009), Neumann-Held and Rehmann-Sutter (2006), and Rehmann-Sutter (2002).

  7. 7.

    For a comment on this view, see Rehmann-Sutter (2008: 42–45).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

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  1. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter
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Correspondence to Christoph Rehmann-Sutter .

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  1. Section de Biologie, University of Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland

    Dana Mahr

  2. Section de Biologie, University of Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland

    Martina von Arx

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Rehmann-Sutter, C. (2020). Developmental Narratives: How We Think that Organisms Use Genetic and Epigenetic Information. In: Mahr, D., von Arx, M. (eds) De-Sequencing. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7728-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7728-4_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-7728-4

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