An Epigenetic Century: The History and Future of a New Science of Life.

9781658491655

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019

1 online resource (234 p.)

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This dissertation investigates the history of the postgenomic science of epigenetics, which emerged at the intersection of debates on organismal development, inheritance, and evolution in twentieth-century biology. During this period, scientists searched for the mechanisms that could explain these processes. Some sought to ground their explanations in the nucleus and an organism’s genes. Others rejected the simplification or life into genetic and molecular terms. In particular, they questioned the ability of genes and molecules to explain complex organismal processes such as organization adequately. This dissertation spans the period between 1900 to 2018 and traces the personal and intellectual trajectories of four biologists in four locations that belonged to the skeptical group of scientists: the Northeast and Pacific Northwest in the United States; Cambridge and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. The scientists were embryologist Conrad Hal Waddington, protozoologist Vance Tartar, evolutionary scientist Lynn Margulis, and posthuman, feminist biologist and historian Donna Haraway. This dissertation argues that epigenetics arose as an alternative and new science of life at the moment of convergence of non-genetic, non-nuclear, and non-neo-Darwinian views of development, inheritance, and evolution in the late twentieth century made possible by the work of Waddington, Tartar, and Margulis. In doing so, this work provides a new account of the history of epigenetics that does not attribute it solely to Waddington. Moreover, it situates the emergence of epigenetics at the intersection of biology, society, and politics.The first chapter examines Waddington’s life during his time at Cambridge in the 1930s and Edinburgh University from 1942 to 1974. It aims to understand the process through which he came to propose the term epigenetics. The dissertation shows that Waddington wanted to account for complexity in the developmental processes of the organism. In the 1930s, he was focused on translating philosopher Whitehead’s organicist philosophy as a biological concept of complexity during a process called epigenesis. During World War II, his scientific humanism fostered relational thinking between the environment and the organism which became the cornerstone in the concept of epigenetics he coined in 1940. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, he transformed his concept of epigenetics into a political concept that the dissertation describes as “epigenetic humanism.” It was a biological concept modified amidst the environmental degradation and decolonization movements to conceptualize a different attitude toward the surrounding nature and world.The dissertation then turns to Tartar, the subject of the second chapter. He was a protozoologist and a cell biologist who worked extensively with the unicellular protozoans Paramecium and Stentor from the 1930s until 1991 in a hand-built laboratory in Seattle, Washington. Through his work, he challenged the primacy of the nucleus in cell structure and function and supported the view of non-nuclear inheritance. His 1930s was characterized by his interest in experimental work, enthusiasm for new and sophisticated technologies such as the ultracentrifuge for biology. By the 1940s, became engrossed in theoretical questions in biology through philosopher J.H. Woodger’s work. His experience in WWII, however, made Tartar eschew modern technology in his work, which he saw as a type of ideological state apparatus. Thus, his time after the 1950s was devoted to the studies of the Stentor through inexpensive equipment. His most innovative work happened under these conditions. By the late 1950s, Tartar proved that the nucleus was not the sole source of morphological structure and substantial evidence for inheritance non-nuclear factors.The last core chapter analyzes Margulis from the 1960s to 2011. She published her compelling paper on endosymbiosis in 1967 as the mechanism for evolution that challenged the established view of neo-Darwinian evolution. Through her endeavors to advocate for this new view of evolution, she achieved in undoing the evolutionary synthesis by the 1980s. In doing so, she not only uncoupled questions of development, inheritance, and evolution back as separate domains of studies but also dethroned genetics as a central principle in biology. While the 1970s were characterized by attempts fit endosymbiosis into neo-Darwinism, the 1980s saw Margulis critique neo-Darwinism as metaphysics. By the 1990s, endosymbiosis merged with the theory of planetary regulation called Gaia to provide a theory and practice of living on a shared planet with the biotic and abiotic matter.The epilogue begins tracing the way that the legacies of Waddington, Tartar, and Margulis contributed to the emergence of the field of posthumanist, feminist STS after the 1970s through Donna Haraway. It examines the works of Haraway, her students, and her allies and illustrates how interdisciplinary knowledge was created through a symbiotic conversation between biology and the humanities.

Dissertations & Theses @ Yale University.

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July 15, 2020

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2019.

Yale University. History of Science and Medicine.