Lamarck's Revenge

How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution's Past and Present

Peter Ward

A riveting explanation of epigenetics, offering startling insights into our inheritable traits.

In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and repopulated after mass extinctions. Now advances in the study of DNA and RNA have resurrected epigenetics, which can create radical physical and physiological changes in subsequent generations by the simple addition of a single small molecule, thus passing along a propensity for molecules to attach in the same places in the next generation.
Epigenetics is a complex process, but paleontologist and astrobiologist Peter Ward breaks it down for general readers, using the epigenetic paradigm to reexamine how the history of our species—from deep time to the outbreak of the Black Plague and into the present—has left its mark on our physiology, behavior, and intelligence. Most alarming are chapters about epigenetic changes we are undergoing now triggered by toxins, environmental pollutants, famine, poor nutrition, and overexposure to violence.

Lamarck's Revenge is an eye-opening and provocative exploration of how traits are inherited, and how outside influences drive what we pass along to our progeny.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Selected Books by Peter Ward
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface. The Jurassic Park of Nevada
• Introduction. Looking Back
• Chapter I. From God to Science
• Chapter II. Lamarck to Darwin
• Chapter III. From Darwin to the New (Modern) Synthesis
• Chapter IV. Epigenetics and the Newer Synthesis
• Chapter V. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times—in Deep Time
• Chapter VI. Epigenetics and the Origin and Diversification of Life
• Chapter VII. Epigenetics and the Cambrian Explosion
• Chapter VIII. Epigenetic Processes Before and After Mass Extinctions
• Chapter IX. The Best and Worst of Times in Human History
• Chapter X. Epigenetics and Violence
• Chapter XI. Can Famine and Food Change Our DNA?
• Chapter XII. The Heritable Legacy of Pandemic Diseases
• Chapter XIII. The Chemical Present
• Chapter XIV. Future Biotic Evolution in the CRISPR-Cas9 World
• Epilogue. Looking Forward
• Notes
• Index
• A Note on the Author
• Also available from Peter Ward (with Joe Kirschvink)
• Copyright