Heredity is the process — traits being passed from parents to offspring. Genetics is the field of study that investigates that process, along with genes, variation and inheritance generally. Heredity is what happens; genetics is the discipline that studies it.
The core difference
One names a natural process, the other names the science of it.
- heredity — the transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring.
- genetics — the branch of biology studying genes, heredity and variation.
The wider terms
Genome is the complete set of genetic material in an organism. Genomics is the study of genomes as wholes, as distinct from classical genetics focusing on individual genes. Epigenetics studies changes in gene expression that are not changes to the underlying sequence.
The words
Heredity comes from Latin heres, heir — the same root as inherit. Genetics was coined in 1905 from Greek genesis, origin, and predates the discovery of DNA's structure by nearly fifty years.
