The Nature of Morphology

Written by Vincent Scholze

“Atoms cannot form materials by simple addition or ordering. A mysterious independence encloses them and binds them together; our mind meets it with a rebuff, but has to make way for it in the end.” (P. Teilhard de Chardin, 1955 – translated)

1. Introduction

The material aspects of an organism, the abstractions, are mostly seen as the only aspects. The deeper one gets into material systems, the more often one realises the complexity of matter. By abstraction, science can understand the material aspects and analyse them very accurately, but solutions in a larger connection are often hard to find. Modern biology only looks at the material systems (quantity) and tries to find solutions only there. But we have to realise once that not everything can be solved this way. Science has the aim to contribute to the knowledge of life and the world around us. In this context it is absurd to gain that knowledge only through material aspects of systems. Why should we deny the unexplored realms if we don’t even know what or how they can contribute to our scientific research?

It can be assumed that we only know a small fraction about the organisation within cells, genetics and the morphology of organisms. Modern scientists seem to have the idea that if they get deep enough into the material aspects of systems, they eventually will know the principles behind al these biological phenomenons. But we have to keep in mind that there can be other aspects and other ways. There might even be aspects of life that we can’t even imagine. By studying abstractions more and more in detail, we might keep on floating on the surface, while we want to dive deeper and deeper into material systems to reveal the principles behind it. So this is the time to start thinking about the future of science and other possibilities that maybe can give us a more clear and total vision on our subjects of research.

The English scientist Rupert Sheldrake tried to get to this and came up with a new theory: the hypothesis of formative causation. From the point of view of this hypothesis I analysed my own subject of research and I shall try to illustrate Sheldrake’s theory with the results of this analysis.
This paper can be regarded as an example of an alternative view that we could use in science in order to try to understand more about the principles of life.