This paper builds upon historico-epistemological analyses of plasticity across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to distinguish among uses of this notion in contemporary epigenetics. By digging into this diachronic phase of plasticity thinking, we highlight a series of historically situated understandings and pragmatic dimensions of this notion. Specifically, our analysis describes four distinct phases in plasticity thinking across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: (1) plasticity as chemical modification of the body by its milieu; (2) plasticity as explanandum for the modifications of life's ontogenetic and phylogenetic substrates; (3) plasticity as mechanistic process in need of distinct explanations in ontogeny and phylogeny; and (4) plasticity as responsive potential to perturbations of a complex genetic system of development. These four versions of plasticity provide, in turn, the opportunity to discern synchronically the uses of this notion in epigenetic biosciences. Fleshing out these historical ramifications animating the present, we argue, highlights a fundamental epistemological disagreement at the basis of the controversies around the definition, scope, and epistemic priorities of epigenetics: how to reconcile the contemporary epistemologies of plasticity that hold epigenetic marks capable of bearing the material impression of the environment with those grounded on a strong view of (epigenetic) plasticity as operating under genetic control? Parallel to this analysis of the epistemic space of plasticity from the nineteenth century onward, we show how these distinct modes of understanding body-environment relationships also constituted conceptual, representational, and experimental resources for understanding the entanglement between life as a biological and socially situated phenomenon. These different traces of biosocial thinking ante litteram, we conclude, provide a blueprint to interrogate today's assumptions, values, (social) ontologies, and political leanings behind similar attempts to interpret the biosocial nexus that links our biology with its material, social, and cultural environments.

中文翻译：

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生物社会的痕迹：当代表观遗传学中的“可塑性”历史化

本文建立在对 19 和 20 世纪可塑性的历史认识论分析的基础上，以区分这一概念在当代表观遗传学中的用途。通过深入研究可塑性思维的这个历时阶段，我们强调了这一概念的一系列历史定位理解和实用维度。具体来说，我们的分析描述了 19 世纪和 20 世纪可塑性思维的四个不同阶段：（1）可塑性是身体在环境中的化学修饰；(2) 可塑性作为生命个体发育和系统发育底物改变的解释；(3) 可塑性作为需要在个体发育和系统发育中明确解释的机械过程；(4) 可塑性作为对复杂遗传发育系统扰动的响应潜力。反过来，这四种可塑性提供了机会来同步辨别这一概念在表观遗传生物科学中的应用。我们认为，充实这些使现在充满活力的历史后果，强调了围绕表观遗传学的定义、范围和认知优先级的争议基础上的基本认识论分歧：如何调和当代的可塑性认识论，这些认识论持有能够承受的表观遗传标记环境的物质印象与那些基于（表观遗传）可塑性的强烈观点在遗传控制下运作的印象？在分析 19 世纪以后可塑性的认知空间的同时，我们展示了这些理解身体 - 环境关系的不同模式如何也构成了概念性、表征性、和实验资源，用于理解作为生物和社会情境现象的生命之间的纠缠。我们得出结论，这些不同的生物社会思维痕迹提供了一个蓝图，以询问当今的假设、价值观、（社会）本体论和政治倾向背后的类似尝试，以解释将我们的生物学与其物质、社会和文化联系起来的生物社会关系环境。