Hi all
It's a new year, etc. and we have started off with a bang. Epigenetics -- what even is that? Fact is, the idea actually pre-dates modern genetics. The problem lies in the fact that so many words and concepts have flowed out of Genesis. The water is murky here and it doesn't get clearer until you pour it into small glasses and look closely. 

Here we have a discussion of "the new epigenesis" in 1895:

It is on the biological side, strange as it may seem, that we
meet with extremes of mechanism, equalling, if not exceeding,
the discarded errors of vitalism. An epidemic of metaphysical
physics seems to be in progress — a sort of neo-epigenesis. 

In place of the vis essentialis of the old epigenesis, the new epigenesis
sets up as its fetish the vis impressa. The new god is
preferred to the old because it works from the outside instead
of the inside. It represents the sum of external conditions
and influences at the present moment, and is proclaimed allsufficient
for building up organisms out of isotropic corpuscles.

Previous conditions are not, indeed, quite ignored, for they have
resulted in special molecular constitutions called germs*** 
and these display peculiar molecular activities known as metab-
olism, growth, and division. The long past can bring forth
only a molecular basis ; a few hours of the present can supply
all, or nearly all, the determinations of the most complex
organism. Impotent past, prepotent present ...
Heredity does not explain itself or anything else, and it detracts
from the omnipotence and universality of molecular epigenetics.

*** germs would later be called "genes" and from that flowed "genetics," only to be challenged again by epigenetics!

¶

I apologize if I have over-reacted to Chesnut's question about epigenetics, I tend to do that

PLB

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