ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at epigenetics and postgenomics in terms of an ontological drift toward a new “holistic materialism” of the genome. Epigenetics’ importance can be seen precisely as a window into the wider body within which DNA is tightly wrapped – a material body that was neglected at the peak of the information genome. Embryologist and polymath C. H. Waddington’s embryological work is not the only root of contemporary epigenetics. Alongside this tradition, a parallel line of research took place not outside but within molecular biology, quite distant from the developmental debates that fascinated Waddington. In its applied dimension, epigenetics is often described as the “molecular link” between the environment and the genome, or the mechanistic pathways by which environmental factors and experience become biologically embedded, that is, “get under the skin”. Epigenetics occupies a wide terrain, and it is therefore important to sketch a few distinctions among different research communities.
