Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor

Waddington, the epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates cellular development. Squier examines three cases in which the metaphor has been imaginatively deployed to illustrate complex systems that link scientific and cultural practices: graphic medicine, landscape architecture, and bioArt. Devised in the 1940s by the biologist C. H. Challenging reductive understandings of epigenetics, Squier boldly reclaims the broader significance of the epigenetic landscape as a figure at the nexus of art, design, and science.. As a scientific model, it fell out of use in the late 1960s but returned at the beginning of the twenty-first century with the advent of big-data genomic research because of its utility among scientists across the life sciences to think more creatively about and discuss genetics. In Epigenetic Landscapes Susan Merrill Squier follows the model’s cultural trail, from its first visualization by the artist John Piper to its use beyond science

Be ready to question your perceptions of human development, modern art, landscape design, graphic illustration, and the relations of science, art, and nature as you enter this fascinating book.". Viewing the world through Waddington's epigenetic landscape, Squier presents us with a feminist, interactionist, re-ordering of some of our dearest models of reality. "Susan Merrill Squier has great fun demolishing silos and rearranging their contents