A virtual revolution has taken place in our knowledge of environmental influences on gene expression that has not yet seeped into the social sciences in general and the behavioral sciences in particular. Aside from the feared misinterpretation of Lamarckian mechanisms at work, there is an explicit dogma, formulated as such, that does not permit environmental influences on gene activity: the “central dogma of molecular biology,” first enunciated by Crick in 1958. (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998, p. 792)
More than 40 years ago, Gilbert Gottlieb (along with like-minded predecessors and colleagues such as T. C. Schneirla and Zing-Yang Kuo) began a career-long effort to convince scholars from a variety of disciplines that real and lasting scientific progress in our understanding of development, and genetic contributions to development, would not be possible until a relational, developmental systems approach was adopted and routinely applied in research. Gottlieb's meta-theory of a dynamic, coactional system spanning genetic, neural, behavioral, and environmental contributions to growth and development defied the central dogma of genetics (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998). He offered support for this systems perspective in the form of extensive comparative data that he generated himself, as well as compelling examples of phenotypic plasticity reflecting species ranging from wasps to humans (e.g., see Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998).
Gottlieb offered a cutting-edge, probabilistic conception of epigenesis (see Gottlieb [Reference Gottlieb1992] for his figurative framework) with a focus on relational, bidirectional causes of developmental processes that are non-linear and sometimes not obvious (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1997). “The cause of development – what makes development happen – is the relationship of the components, not the components themselves” (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1997, p. 91). Sadly, when he passed away in 2006, Gottlieb was unconvinced that his years of writing and accumulation of evidence had made a real impact on the way scientists, and certainly the broader population, think about genetic processes and their coactional contributions to health and development. I think he would be very pleased to see that a new generation of scholars continues to advocate for this coactional paradigm of genetic research, marshaling extraordinary data made possible through new technology to demonstrate the poverty of dualistic, reductionist approaches to development and the wealth of insight to be gained from a complex, multilevel, bidirectional systems model.
Charney's target article is a welcome contribution to this tradition, using both older and new empirical examples to demonstrate the necessity of thinking about genetics from a systems perspective. Using insights from next-generation studies, Charney compellingly reasserts the paradigmatic assumption that DNA is dynamic and environmentally responsive, not the static starting point for fixed development processes. Charney notes that although there may be long distances between genes and regulatory elements, and between life experience and biological processes, there is in reality no boundary between genes and the environment.
I'm not quite sure why Charney chose to include a discussion of how behavioral genetics might fit the new paradigm. As Gottlieb often noted, the notion of partitioning variation into discrete biological and contextual elements is philosophically incompatible with the assumptions of the postgenomic paradigm proposed in the target article. However, that seeming inconsistency aside, with the persistent and convincing arguments offered in insightful articles like Charney's, the field will continue to move to the probabilistic, multilevel systems paradigm envisioned by multiple generations of visionary scientists.
A virtual revolution has taken place in our knowledge of environmental influences on gene expression that has not yet seeped into the social sciences in general and the behavioral sciences in particular. Aside from the feared misinterpretation of Lamarckian mechanisms at work, there is an explicit dogma, formulated as such, that does not permit environmental influences on gene activity: the “central dogma of molecular biology,” first enunciated by Crick in 1958. (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998, p. 792)
More than 40 years ago, Gilbert Gottlieb (along with like-minded predecessors and colleagues such as T. C. Schneirla and Zing-Yang Kuo) began a career-long effort to convince scholars from a variety of disciplines that real and lasting scientific progress in our understanding of development, and genetic contributions to development, would not be possible until a relational, developmental systems approach was adopted and routinely applied in research. Gottlieb's meta-theory of a dynamic, coactional system spanning genetic, neural, behavioral, and environmental contributions to growth and development defied the central dogma of genetics (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998). He offered support for this systems perspective in the form of extensive comparative data that he generated himself, as well as compelling examples of phenotypic plasticity reflecting species ranging from wasps to humans (e.g., see Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1998).
Gottlieb offered a cutting-edge, probabilistic conception of epigenesis (see Gottlieb [Reference Gottlieb1992] for his figurative framework) with a focus on relational, bidirectional causes of developmental processes that are non-linear and sometimes not obvious (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1997). “The cause of development – what makes development happen – is the relationship of the components, not the components themselves” (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1997, p. 91). Sadly, when he passed away in 2006, Gottlieb was unconvinced that his years of writing and accumulation of evidence had made a real impact on the way scientists, and certainly the broader population, think about genetic processes and their coactional contributions to health and development. I think he would be very pleased to see that a new generation of scholars continues to advocate for this coactional paradigm of genetic research, marshaling extraordinary data made possible through new technology to demonstrate the poverty of dualistic, reductionist approaches to development and the wealth of insight to be gained from a complex, multilevel, bidirectional systems model.
Charney's target article is a welcome contribution to this tradition, using both older and new empirical examples to demonstrate the necessity of thinking about genetics from a systems perspective. Using insights from next-generation studies, Charney compellingly reasserts the paradigmatic assumption that DNA is dynamic and environmentally responsive, not the static starting point for fixed development processes. Charney notes that although there may be long distances between genes and regulatory elements, and between life experience and biological processes, there is in reality no boundary between genes and the environment.
I'm not quite sure why Charney chose to include a discussion of how behavioral genetics might fit the new paradigm. As Gottlieb often noted, the notion of partitioning variation into discrete biological and contextual elements is philosophically incompatible with the assumptions of the postgenomic paradigm proposed in the target article. However, that seeming inconsistency aside, with the persistent and convincing arguments offered in insightful articles like Charney's, the field will continue to move to the probabilistic, multilevel systems paradigm envisioned by multiple generations of visionary scientists.