Epigenetics: True or False, Revolutionary or Trivial?
12th December 2018
Steve Sailer looks at the science.
As I’ve been mentioning for years, we live in an age of growing antiquarianism in terms of thinking about cause and effect of social outcomes. When I was young, there was much interest in how things had changed from the 1960s onward. The Sixties were seen as a big deal.
But now, leading historical savants like Ta-Nehisi Coates act as if they have been living in an underground fallout shelter since 1959. They’ve never heard of the Sixties. What possible influence could the last 50 years have on the present? If you want to understand the Obama Era you need to obsess over New Deal redlining.
The enthusiasm for epigenetics — i.e., a Lamarckian/Lysenkoist theory that the past, especially politically exploitable traumas such as the Holocaust or slavery, can damage genes for multiple generations — is related to this antiquarian turn,
You will have noticed this ‘antiquarian turn’ in public statements by those on the Left. When Newt Gingrich mentions orphanages, Hillary Clinton talks like there haven’t been any changes since Dickens. When the Left talks about slavery, you’d think that the Emancipation Proclamation was just last week.