International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

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.