BEYOND BOUNDARIES: INTERLACING EVOLUTION, EPIGENETICS, CREATIVITY AND DIVERSITY IN UNDERSTANDING BEING AND BECOMING HUMAN

Agustin Fuentes

University of Notre Dame

THE ANTHROPOCENE…

• For hundreds of thousands of years humans have been shaping and managing the world, and recently we’re doing it with increasing speed, influence, and zeal.

• The human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system” -Stefan et al. 2011

• “a kind of hybrid Earth, of nature injected with human will, however responsibly or irresponsibly that will may have been exercised” -Hamilton and Grinevald 2015

Photo: Dhritman Das

SCIENCE VS HUMANITIES?

• CP Snow and the “two cultures”

• Ways of knowing, reductionism and complexities

• Universities and Institutional structures

• Disciplinary “boundaries”

• Publication processes and funding structures

• Serious conflicts real and ideological

• Places of non-overlap?

• Lack of imagination?

Ethics, Ignorance, And Insecurity

HOW WE SEE (IMAGINE) AND EXPERIENCE/EMBODY THE WORLD MATTERS

The human umwelt

LOCALES/CONTEXTS FOR MOVING TOWARDS ENHANCED ENGAGEMENT

• Being and Becoming Human in the Anthropocene and “seeing the elephant”

• History

• Environments and Ecologies

• Race and Racism

• Immigration and Identity

• Inequality and Health

• Human Nature(s) and Human Future(s)

THREE BRIEF EXAMPLES

• Contemporary Evolutionary Theory (EES) and understanding humans

• Race, racism and inequality

• From “genetics” to epigenetics and beyond

DISCARD “NATURE-NURTURE”

COMPLEXITY IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY HELPS THINK ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/darwin/

MOVING AWAY FROM SINGLE EVENTS TO A SYSTEMS APPROACH

THE EXTENDED EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS

• Mutation introduces genetic variation which in interaction with epigenetic and developmental processes produces biological variation in organisms, which may be passed from generation to generation

• Natural Selection shapes variation in response to specific constraints and pressures in the environment (sensu lato) and Gene flow and Genetic Drift structure the distribution and patterns (landscape) of that variation

• Dynamic organism-environment interaction can result in niche construction which can change/shape the patterns, foci, and intensity of natural selection and creates ecological inheritance

• Phenotypic plasticity, developmental plasticity/reactivity, & acquisition of non-genetically induced features (via Neo-Lamarckian processes) all can play substantive roles in the patterns and production of variation

• Multiple pathways of inheritance (genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic) can affect evolutionary processes

NATURAL SELECTION IS NOT THE ONLY ARCHITECT OF FUNCTION… NOR IS EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE

NECESSARILY RANDOM

• Traditional (Neo-Darwinian) • Natural Selection targeted to genes or individuals

• Gene flow

• Genetic Drift

• Contemporary (Extended Synthesis) • Natural selection

• Flow of variation

• Drift of variation

• Epigenetic inheritance

• Behavioral and symbolic inheritance

• Niche construction and ecological inheritance- restructuring the context in which variance occurs

NICHE CONSTRUCTION

• http://lalandlab.st-andrews.ac.uk/niche/index.html

• Laland and O’Brien 2012

NICHE CONSTRUCTION

http://www.nicheconstruction.com/

HUMAN EVOLUTIONARY COMPLEXITY

THE WAY WE USE RACE ≠BIOLOGY

BUT RACE MATTERS: RACISM AND INEQUALITY ARE REAL AND HAVE BIOLOGICAL IMPACTS

THE COMMON (MIS)CONCEPTION: THE “BIG 3”, EUROPEAN

Race A

Race B

Race C

BLACK AND WHITE?

• Melanocytes, melanin and UV light

Skin “color” in indigenous populations

Jablonski, N. G. and G. Chaplin. 2010. Human skin pigmentation as an adaptation to UV radiation. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107(supp.):8962-8968.

Skin reflectance distribution

UV light intensity

Jablonski, N. G. and G. Chaplin. 2010. Human skin pigmentation as an adaptation to UV radiation. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 107(supp.):8962-8968.

Read Nina Jablonski’s “SKIN: a natural history”

Genetic Ancestry???

HUMAN GENETICS DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THIS…

“European”

“Asian” “African”

THIS IS WHAT HUMAN GENETIC VARIATION LOOKS LIKE

Variation w/in African populations

Variation in populations Outside of Africa

IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT BIOLOGY DIVIDES HUMANS INTO 3-5 MEASURABLE UNITS?

NO • Africa, Asia and Europe?-nope

• Black, White, Yellow, Red?-nope

• Caucasoid, Mongoid and Negroid?-nope

• Causasian, Eurasian, Melanesian, Austronesian, Nilotic,

and on and on- nope

BUT….:

• Humans do vary in biology and ability--we are not all the same

• We can tell populations apart based on some biological characteristics

• populations have variable assemblages of traits relative to other populations-migration, mating, history, environmental variables, etc….

RACE

Experience

Development

Education Economics

Bio-History

Physiology

Health

Political context

Social history

Ethnicity

In our society “Race” is a shorthand for the interaction of a multitude of factors,

It is not a stand-alone category, unit, or entity, nor is it static… but it is very real

RACE MATTERS

• In tests of housing markets conducted by the US department of Housing and Urban Development Black and Hispanic potential renters and buyers are discriminated against (relative to whites) nearly 25% of the time

• the median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers were $601 for blacks and $541 for Hispanics, compared with $880 for Asians and $757 for whites.

• The 2011 infant mortality rate per 1000 births USA average 6.39, for whites 5.29, for blacks 12.4, for hispanics 5.33

• Percentage of groups without health insurance pre 2013, USA average 17.2%, whites 12.2%, blacks 20.9%, hispanics 33.5%, (other primarily asian) 17.7%

• -The 2009 net worth of households in the USA:

white: $113,149, black: $5677, and hispanic: $6325

SO WHAT?

“Race” as we use the term and classification is not a reflection of biological groups

Therefore

Patterned differences that occur between what we call “Races” are not caused by inherent biological differences in these “Races”

They are due to social, historical, political, economic, and experiential contexts and…

Are changeable

Salgado

EPIGENETICS AND THE MOVE TOWARDS DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS

Some epigenetic changes are induced by the early environment and impact on the regulation of gene expression in the brain

the epigenetic mechanism of DNA methylation is a crucial mediator of early-life experiences, thereby maintaining life-long neurobiological sequelae of Childhood maltreatment, and strongly determining psychopathological risk. –Lutz and Turecki 2013

EMBODIMENT IS REAL…LITERALLY

• Epigenetics and human evolution

• Epigenetics and Race/Inequality

• Epigenetics and why biosocial processes matter

ENTANGLING APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING THE MOVING

TARGET THAT IS THE HUMAN Let’s get creative and disregard boundaries

Image by Sarah Derememer

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION