THE EVO-DEVO AND ITS EPIGENETICS— “A NEW BIOLOGY FOR PSYCHOLOGY”? THE CASE OF INHERITANCE OF THE ATTACHMENT STYLE

Abstract

The Evolutionary Developmental Biology (in abbreviation Evo-Devo) gains in popularity among psychologists. It would be a “synthesis of development and evolution” which would finally allow a rapprochement of psychology and biology. The Evo-Devo redefines epigenetics and opposes it to the (alleged) genetic determinism, genetic reductionism and preformationism of the Modern Synthesis (MS), proposes the concept of the extended inheritance and a mechanism of inheritance of acquired characters, which are claimed to be (neo-) Lamarckian, fuses the three questions separated by the MS: the origin of variation, fate of variation and inheritance of variation. These points of the Evo-Devo’s programme particularly resonate with psychologists’ expectations: genes alone do not explain the question of transgenerationality, the ontogeny of the attachment, e.g. early experience with caregivers (e.g. separation and loss) have a long-term effects on adult development can span a person’s lifetime, can even span generations. However, in the paper I show that the inheritance of acquired characters is indeed impossible, that Lamarck never proposed a theory of the inheritance of acquired characters and that it is a confusion rather than fusion to link the question of the origin of variation, the question of development and the one of inheritance. If the Evo-Devo is so appealing to psychologists, it is not because there is “a new biology for psychology.” I show that psychologists’ attitude towards monism was ambivalent and such was the relationship between psychology and biology. The paper is a standpoint of a philosopher of biology interested in psychology.

Keywords

• evo-devo; epigenetics
• extended inheritance
• transgenerationality
• attachment style
• dualism
• mind-body problem