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The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society pp 167–187Cite as

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Histories and Meanings of Epigenetics

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Abstract

The fast evolving field of epigenetics is currently generating interest and excitement, but also controversy. With its main proposition that environmental influences, from food to stress, can be rapidly inherited through molecular mechanisms that supplement or modulate information contained in DNA, some have come to see epigenetics as a bridge between social and natural sciences, reigniting the nature/nurture debate. Others, however, argue that epigenetics, while important, is part and parcel of genetics and not paradigm-changing. These contrasting views go along with opposing historical narratives and understandings of future promise of epigenetics. I examine these different histories and juxtapose these different meanings, to sketch how epigenetics came to high public prominence and what kind of larger developments in science and society this prominence indicates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, Richard Dawkins described the inheritance of epigenetic effects as ‘a flash in the pan, both in its evolutionary significance and the “15 minutes of fame” which he declares it is enjoying undeservedly’ (Webb 2016).

  2. 2.

    Robin Holliday, who can be regarded the founder of modern epigenetics, devotes a short paragraph to the era before Waddington, and that paragraph is mostly about genetics, Morgan and Mendel—and then another short paragraph to Waddington (to say that ‘not many scientists were influenced by him’) and genetics in the 1960s. See Holliday(2012).

  3. 3.

    ‘To Waddington, epigenetics was the study of the way the phenotype was determined by the genotype, and he felt that the only way to get at this was to understand how genes work at the molecular level.’ So Birnstiel focused on separating out genes—later moving onto histone genes. See in Grunstein and Bird (2015).

  4. 4.

    An overview of Riggs’ early research career at the City of Hope may be found here http://breakthroughs.cityofhope.org/art-riggs-epigenetics

  5. 5.

    So Michael Skinner has been cited to say that one of the forces working against him were ‘genetic determinists clinging to an old paradigm’ (Interlandi 2013).

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is an early output of the project titled ‘A history of the “epigenetic revolution”’, supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. I am grateful to the book editors for their valuable comments; to my Liggins Institute colleagues—in the first place Sir Peter Gluckman, Allan Sheppard, Sherry Ngo, Felicia Low and Alan Beedle, and many others—for numerous conversations about epigenetics over the years, and to Klaus Taschwer of Der Standard, Vienna, for an insight into media perceptions of epigenetics.

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  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Tatjana Buklijas

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  1. Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Maurizio Meloni

  2. School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    John Cromby

  3. Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Des Fitzgerald

  4. Department of Anthropology, Laval University, Québec, Canada

    Stephanie Lloyd

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Buklijas, T. (2018). Histories and Meanings of Epigenetics. In: Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D., Lloyd, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_8

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