Eva Jablonka

Eva Jablonka is an Israeli evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science whose work on epigenetic inheritance and the extended evolutionary synthesis has challenged the gene-centric foundations of twentieth-century evolutionary biology. Trained in genetics and philosophy, Jablonka has argued that heredity is not confined to DNA sequence but operates through multiple channels — including epigenetic marks, behavioral traditions, and symbolic communication — each with its own evolutionary dynamics.

Her most influential work, co-authored with Marion Lamb, reframes evolution as a process occurring across four dimensions of inheritance: genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic. This framework does not deny the importance of genes but argues that treating them as the sole inheritance system produces a systematically distorted picture of evolutionary change. Jablonka's position is often characterized as neo-Lamarckian, though she rejects the label as historically inaccurate: she argues that the phenomena she studies were unknown to Lamarck and that the modern synthesis was wrong to declare them impossible rather than merely unexplored.

Jablonka's work exemplifies the Synthesizer disposition in science: she draws connections between molecular biology, developmental biology, ethology, and linguistics that specialists in each field often fail to see. The question her critics raise is whether these connections amount to a new theoretical framework or merely a catalog of interesting exceptions.