Morphogenesis in TGD Universe

Abstract

The problem of structure formation  in biology - morphogenesis  - was put under the rug by most biologists after the emergence of genetics. Sheldrake  is one of those who have taken it seriously and has been labeled as a crackpot by mainstreamers.  One just assumes that the structures are there  and performs chemistry around these structures. This approach is very practical and has given an enormous amount of data but very little  understanding. In standard physics the description of  spatial  structures would be in terms of enhanced densities of biomolecules or of their gradients  in some space-time region. This is the only possibility  because the space-time of standard physics is topologically and geometrically utterly trivial.  Empty Minkowski space is an excellent approximation for it. If space-time topology were  topologically non-trivial, situation would change dramatically. Already Wheeler saw this possibility and in  the biology inspired by TGD  all structures correspond to structures of topologically non-trivial space-time identified as surface in certain 8-D space-time: space-time sheets, magnetic flux tubes, etc...  The entire TGD inspired quantum biology relies on this vision. The structures that we see around us would represent the non-trivial topology of space-time surface. All structures - including bio-molecules, membrane like structures, organelles, organs, ... - would be 4-D space-time surfaces. This would reduce the notion of  shape in biology to a precisely defined and testable geometrodynamics coupling to EM fields.