BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

MORPHIC FIELD 2)

A field of information which would exert a formative power over processes (adapted from F. DAVID PEAT, 1988, p.62).

This still quite controversial concept has been introduced by R. SHELDRAKE. (1982)

F. DAVID PEAT writes: "It appears that WADDINGTON was moving toward a notion of development in which living matter in some way responds to a field of information which exerts a formative power over the processes of the cell…

"SHELDRAKE has proposed that such fields of information do exist and influence the structures not only of living organisms but of inanimate matter as well. According to SHELDRAKE, all matter has an associated field of memory which plays an active role in guiding the formation of structures and various processes. Clearly if SHELDRAKE's idea is taken seriously, then it would extend the nature of matter by introducing a new level, that of active information" (1988, p.162).

And : "These morphic fields are a type of memory that acts like a formative pattern with regard to material structures and patterns of behavior" (Ibid, p.166).

SHELDRAKE formulated his "Hypothesis of formative causation", of Aristotelician flavor, and derived from the different morphogenetic field concept, as a basis for his morphic fields. J. CASTI resumes it as follows:

"1. Morphogenetic fields are physically real;

"2. These fields shape and organize developing plants and animals, as well as stabilize the forms of adult organisms;

"3. Each kind of cell, tissue, organ, and organism has its own kind of field;

"4. The morphogenetic field results from the actual forms of previous organisms"(1990, p.175).

As observed by F.D. PEAT: "Little in the way of original research has been done, so that the overall weight of evidence is not particularly compelling" (p.164).

Features like anagenesis, Pasteurian asymmetry, aura, flicker noise in criticality, holograms, homeoboxes (in embryology), non-locality, order from order, pattern recognition, MINKOWSKI's space-time diamond, or stigmergy could be considered as related to the morphic fields hypothesis, since all imply some kind of informative action at a distance in space and/or time.

However, the different problem of instant correlation in space-time remains unresolved.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]


We thank the following partners for making the open access of this volume possible: