Eva Jablonka (Hebrew: חווה יבלונקה) (born 1952) is an Israeli evolutionary theorist and geneticist, known especially for her interest in epigenetic inheritance.
Her emphasis on non-genetic forms of evolution has received interest from those attempting to expand the scope of evolutionist thinking into other spheres.
The fourth dimension is symbolic inheritance, which is unique to humans, and in which traditions are passed on “through our capacity for language, and culture, our representations of how to behave, communicated by speech and writing.”[7] In their treatment of the higher levels, Jablonka and Lamb distinguish their approach from the banalities of evolutionary psychology, of "memes", and even from Chomskian ideas of universal grammar.
To liven their text, they utilise thought experiments and dialogue with a sceptical enquirer, one IM-Ifcha Mistabra, Aramaic, they say, for "the opposite conjecture".
[7] In 2008, Jablonka and Lamb published the paper Soft inheritance: Challenging the Modern Synthesis which claimed there is evidence for Lamarckian epigenetic control systems causing evolutionary changes and the mechanisms underlying epigenetic inheritance can also lead to saltational changes that reorganize the epigenome.
They suggest that consciousness is found not only in humans but also in such animals as octopuses and bees, as well as speculating about aliens and artificial intelligence.
[14] Thomas Dickens and Qazi Rahman have written epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and histone modification are genetically inherited under the control of natural selection, and do not challenge the modern evolutionary synthesis.