Towards a Truly Developmental Epigenetics

Abstract

Conceptual and empirical advances across the biological and psychological sciences have made it increasingly clear that genetic and environmental factors cannot be meaningfully partitioned when attempting to explain development. This should be a major theme within the contemporary field of epigenetics. However, the field has yet to fully extricate itself from reductionist tendencies in its conceptualization of developmental relations. Epigenetics today still routinely promotes both a reductionist privileging of molecular over molar levels of explanation and a reductionist focus on separate and distinct roles for genes and environment in any given developmental relation. We argue that the field needs to more rigorously pursue a process-oriented framework that is integrated across molecular, organismal, and environmental levels of biological organization. Transcending the worn and outdated nature-nurture controversy will require a truly developmental epigenetics that embraces the importance of emergence, context, and hierarchical relations in all developmental explanation.