[A Second Look at the Origins of the Concept of Epigenetics'].

Even today, 'epigenetics' is a rather difficult field to define. The explosive growth of epigenetics over the last twenty years is sometimes seen as a revolutionary event in the life sciences, a paradigm shift that would devalue genetics or the standard view of the evolutionary synthesis. The aim of this paper is to place this controversial issue in its historical context.

Heredity as a problem. On Claude Bernard's failed attempts at resolution.

Heredity has been dismissed as an insignificant object in Claude Bernard's physiology, and the topic is usually ignored by historians. Yet, thirty years ago, Jean Gayon demonstrated that Bernard did elaborate on the subject. The present paper aims at reassessing the issue of heredity in Claude Bernard's project of a "general physiology".

The environment: An ambiguous concept in Waddington's biology.

Waddington is usually acknowledged as a biologist who proposed a more subtle concept of environment than the one generally in currency during the rise of the Modern Synthesis. As such, he was among the few scientists in the mid-twentieth century to develop an elaborated concept of the environment that would fully embrace its constructive role both in development and evolution. Yet, on close inspection, there is an inconsistency in Waddington's theoretical positioning.

Epigenetic inheritance and evolution: a historian's perspective.

The aim of this article is to put the growing interest in epigenetics in the field of evolutionary theory into a historical context. First, I assess the view that epigenetic inheritance could be seen as vindicating a revival of (neo)Lamarckism. Drawing on Jablonka's and Lamb's considerable output, I identify several differences between modern epigenetics and what Lamarckism was in the history of science.

Canalization and genetic assimilation: Reassessing the radicality of the Waddingtonian concept of inheritance of acquired characters.

Genetic assimilation is often mixed up with the Baldwin effect. For Waddington, genetic assimilation was both a phenomenon and a specific mechanism of adaptive evolution which was grounded in the concept of canalization. This theoretical link between canalization and genetic assimilation, which was pivotal in Waddington's view, has been weakened since the early 1960s.

Forms of presentism in the history of science. Rethinking the project of historical epistemology.

Since the late 1980s, presentism has seen a resurgence among some historians of science. Most of them draw a line between a good form of presentism and typical anachronism, but where the line should be drawn remains an open question. The present article aims at resolving this problem.

The Microscope against Cell Theory: Cancer Research in Nineteenth-Century Parisian Anatomical Pathology.

This paper examines the reception of cell theory in the field of French anatomical pathology. This reception is studied under the lens of the concept of the cancer cell, which was developed in Paris in the 1840s. In the medical field, cell theory was quickly accessible, understood, and discussed.

The Contributions - and Collapse - of Lamarckian Heredity in Pasteurian Molecular Biology: 1. Lysogeny, 1900-1960.

This article shows how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells.

Why did Jacques Monod make the choice of mechanistic determinism?

The development of molecular biology placed in the foreground a mechanistic and deterministic conception of the functioning of macromolecules. In this article, I show that this conception was neither obvious, nor necessary. Taking Jacques Monod as a case study, I detail the way he gradually came loose from a statistical understanding of determinism to finally support a mechanistic understanding.

Monod before Monod: enzymatic adaptation, Lwoff, and the legacy of general biology.

For most of his scientific career, Jacques Monod appeared to be a man of a single problem: the formation of enzymes and the regulation of their properties. His ability to produce theoretical models led him to play a major role in both the discovery of the operon regulation and the model of allosteric transitions. The successes of Monod, from the 1950s to the Noble Prize (1965), are already well documented.

Georges Teissier (1900-1972) and the modern synthesis in France.

This Perspectives is devoted to the ideas of the French zoologist Georges Teissier about the mechanisms of evolution and the relations between micro- and macroevolution. Working in an almost universally neo-Lamarckian context in France, Teissier was one of the very few Darwinians there at the time of the evolutionary synthesis. The general atmosphere of French zoology during the 1920s and the 1930s will first be recalled, to understand the specific conditions in which Teissier became a zoologist.

French roots of French neo-lamarckisms, 1879-1985.

This essay attempts to describe the neo-Lamarckian atmosphere that was dominant in French biology for more than a century. Firstly, we demonstrate that there were not one but at least two French neo-Lamarckian traditions. This implies, therefore, that it is possible to propose a clear definition of a (neo)Lamarckian conception, and by using it, to distinguish these two traditions.