The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics

As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a “vital spark,” and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik L. Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a Third Way in biology, known by many names, including “the organic philosophy,” which gave rise to C. H. Waddington’s work in the subfield of epigeneti...