While epigenetics is quickly becoming a mainstream field of research, this was not always the case. Until recently epigenetics was a persona non grata within genetics; and even today the findings of epigenetics resesarch are often maligned as either unimportant or as psuedoscience. Epigenetics has a long and colorful scientific and cultural and political history which helps to explain its relatively recent – and still quite mixed – acceptance as a viable field of scientific research. Discussions regarding this history of epigenetics can be found below or by using the Categories list located on the righthand margin of this blog.

Radical Bodies: The Political Biology of the Enlightenment and Contemporary Political Theory

Epigenetics and the Cold War

More About Waddington: Socialism, Science, and Epigenetics

C.H. Waddington: Genesis of the Original Epigeneticist

A Tale of Two Fields: Epigenetics and Biology Between the Wars

The Progressive Movement, Genetics, and the State

Eugenics and the Rise of Population Genetics

Alfred Russel Wallace, Ideology, and Evolution

Lamarckism and the Biology of Discontent in the 1800s

The Unfortunate Legacy of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Lamarck’s Actual Lamarckism (or How Contemporary Epigenetics is not Lamarckian)

The Reception of Epigenetics: More like Mendel or Darwin?

The History of Epigenetics and the Science of Social Progress

Epigenetics, ethics and the evolution of science

A Brief History of Epigenetics: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

A Brief History of Epigenetics: C.H. Waddington

Epigenetics and the Extended Synthesis

The Genetics of the Ethics of the Science of Genetics

Epigenetics Minority Report Part I: Epigenetics, blame, precrime and politics

Epigenetics as a Political Revolution?

More Than Just Science I: The Challenges of Epigenetics to our Traditional Ethics

More Than Just Science II: The Challenges of Epigenetics to our Traditional Ethics

More Than Just Science III: The Challenges of Epigenetics to our Traditional Ethics

More Than Science IV: The Challenges of Epigenetics to our Traditional Ethics

Epigenetics and Environmental Ethics I

Epigenetics and Environmental Ethics II: The Ancient Greeks and the Romans

Epigenetics and Environmental Ethics III: Genetics and the Rise of Christianity

Epigenetics and Environmental Ethics IV: Did Aristotle and Aquinas Discover DNA



History Part I: A Brief History of Epigenetics

History Part II: Epigenetics and the Politics of Science

History Part III: Epigenetics and the Dustbin of History

Epigenetics and Two of its Cold War Casualties

Epigenetics Before Epigenetics Was Cool?

The Epigenetic Evolution of Genetics (and Epigenetics)

How is Epigenetics Different from Genetics?