epigenics

English

Noun

epigenics (uncountable)

1. The way in which something develops as a result of its environment.
   • 1991, Stanley Shostak, Embryology: an introduction to developmental biology, page 479:

     They too hoped to guide 20th century biology into the mainstream of hard-nosed science, but embryologists saw the gene as a disguised homunculus and rejected it. They returned to epigenics and promoted it as rival to the theory of the gene.

   • 2006, Tim Traver, Sippewissett, Or, Life on a Salt Marsh, page 63:

     Epigenics at its most radical said that anything could become anything else: development was just a matter of physics, chemical fluxes, and environmental manipulation.

   • 2016, Stanley Shostak, Death of Life: The Legacy of Molecular Biology, →ISBN, page 39:

     Aristotle is saddled with responsibility for the most ancient verison of epigenics, namely that embryos arise de novo from totally unformed matter in each generation.

See also

• epigenetics
• epigenic