The Epigenetic Turn: 20th-Century Developmental Approaches to Heredity and Evolution
Ludwik Fleck Lecture 2009 by Eva Jablonka

Lecture by

Eva Jablonka
Tel Aviv University, IL

Details

Abstract

For most of the 20th century, soft inheritance, which includes the inheritance of acquired characters, was written out of theories of heredity and evolution. Heredity was identified with genetics, and hereditary variations were seen in terms of combinations of randomly generated gene mutations. However, since the 1990s, biologists have been reappraising the role of developmentally acquired variations, and it is now recognised that some variations–epigenetic variations–which arise in response to the environmental conditions, can be inherited.

We will discuss how and why concepts of heredity have changed, and the repercussions this has for evolutionary thinking. We will also consider whether some of Fleck’s ideas can help us to understand the factors that contributed to biologists’ reluctance to accept that soft inheritance has played a role in evolution.