Inheritance Systems

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition) (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Organisms inherit various kinds of developmental information and cues from their parents. The study of inheritance systems is aimed at identifying and classifying the various mechanisms and processes of heredity, the types of hereditary information that is passed on by each, the functional interaction between the different systems, and the evolutionary consequences of these properties. We present the discussion of inheritance systems in the context of several debates. First, between proponents of monism about heredity (gene-centric views), holism about heredity (Developmental Systems Theory), and those stressing the role of multiple systems of inheritance. Second, between those analyzing inheritance solely in terms of replication and transmission, and views that stress the multi-generation reproduction of phenotypic traits. A third debate is concerned with different criteria that have been proposed for identifying and delimiting inheritance systems. A fourth controversy revolves around the significance of the “Lamarckian” aspects of some of the inheritance systems that have been identified, such as epigenetic inheritance and behavioral inheritance, that allow the transmission of environmentally induced characters (i.e., “soft inheritance”).

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Price Equation and Extended Inheritance.Heikki Helanterä & Tobias Uller - 2010 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 2 (20130604).
Weismann rules! OK? Epigenetics and the Lamarckian temptation.David Haig - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (3):415-428.
The inheritance of features.Matteo Mameli - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):365-399.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-01-05

Downloads
84 (#182,837)

6 months
3 (#439,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Ehud Lamm
Tel Aviv University

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references