Transcending the nature-nurture debate through epigenetics: are we there yet?

The purpose of this special issue of Human Development is to critically examine how epigenetics research does and does not challenge the conceptual trappings of the nature-nurture debate. Further, it explores how developmental scientists can reframe current presentations of epigenetics and its research—presentations that routinely rely on problematic metaphors of information, shaping forces, and the “expression” of genes—to more suitably reflect anti-reductionist, relational, systems-focused conceptions of development. This special issue includes 5 original papers by authors from psychology, biology, and philosophy that address what needs to be done in the conceptual framing of epigenetics to render it in terms appropriate for advancing the field beyond the foundationalism that routinely characterizes conceptualizations of nature-nurture interaction. Contributors consider how the field of epigenetics is typically depicted in the biological and psychological literature and what problems might arise from such depictions.