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AUTHOR'S NOTE Before Darwin, natural history (biology) was divided into two disciplines: morphology (shape) and physiology (function). These were neatly separate until Darwin suggested that one causes the other. This mind-boggling idea has been the basis of the inquiry into the cause, or causes, of evolution, and of vigorous contention among scientists that continues today. The debate is not over whether evolution took place, but over its primary mechanisms. The arch-morphologist of the enlightened eighteenth century was scientist/poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who coined the term “morphology.” Goethe pursued a life-long, Faustian quest for the presumed single, universal structure he called the “Urform,” which underlies and shapes all living form. His correspondence indicates on several occasions that he thought he had found the elusive structure. Two hundred years later the discovery that organic forms could be simulated by the deformation of a strange, newly discovered topological surface led to the conjecture that this unique structure is the basis of all plant and animal shapes, the Urform of Goethe. This structure is an unusual topological configuration consisting of a torus (doughnut form) within a torus. This discovery is the basis of this book, presenting what evolutionary biologist, the late Brian Goodwin, called a “pure structuralist model, an important contribution to taxonomy." The model is based on the premise that the species body form is encoded not in the DNA but in the patterned structure of the membrane of the primordial germ plasm, universal predecessor of the egg. After introductory notes on the scientific phenomena that are touched on by this premise, the theory and the model itself is presented. Explication of the multi-torus model is followed by reprints of scientific papers that form the basis for its premise—the toroidal nature of the embryonic tissue. Also included in this book is a review of the body of scientific literature which questions today’s biology dogma, called the Modern Synthesis or Neo-Darwinism, the dogma installed by committee in the 1940s, claiming that organic shapes are formed by natural selection for adaptation to the environment, based on advantageous mutations caused by random genetic errors. In the past few years a defining architectural structure that occurs in the embryos of animal phyla has been identified in a series of publications by biologists E. Presnov, V. Isaeva, L. Beloussov, Y. Kraus, E.H. Davidson, H. Jockusch, and A. Dress. These discoveries rewrite the understanding of the embryonic membranes that shape the form of the body. The torus model shows that there is a plausible alternative to Natural Selection and Intelligent Design, neither of which explain the evolution of complex form. This problem is exacerbated by the use of the term “Darwinism” by some writers who use it interchangeably for both the fact of evolution by modified descent, well known to society in Darwin’s time, and natural selection, the mechanism proposed by Darwin to account for it. All scientists believe in evolution. Many believe that natural selection plays a lesser, editorial role in its working mechanism. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called those who champion natural selection and adaptation as the sole mechanism of evolution “Darwin Fundamentalists.” While at this writing a number of scientists of world reputation accept the “torus premise” as plausible, many biologists are unable to accept its plausibility as it presumes the negation of a lifetime belief system. As a prominent American Museum of Natural History scientist has said, “I think it’s right, but no one will believe it, including me.” PREFACE We are entering exciting times in Biology. We might call this the age of postnatural selection evolutionary biology, in other words, a kind of post-modernism for the natural sciences. The Darwinian fixation on natural selection and its consequent pan-selectionism have proved inadequate for the demands placed upon them, and now we must look elsewhere for a fuller understanding of the evolutionary process. A paradigm shift of the first order is in the process, making this an especially good time to review our understanding of the scientific process as we seek a way forward. It was once said of the scientific method that science “does not admit of any set method, but must be attempted in every way possible.” As a way of knowing, science has an almost sacred character and thus deserves our best efforts to bring forth ideas and evaluate them as best we can. Thus, suppression of ideas really has no place in science. Scientific controversy is an inevitable and even healthy aspect of scientific study. However, when the rancor generated by competing personalities in science gets too intense, results proceeding from the weaker party can be suppressed or even virtually eliminated, at great loss to the conduct of science. On several occasions I have had to rescue important scientific results from obscurity, or even complete elimination, the result of this type A striking example of this involves the work of Corneille-Jean Koene. Koene’s atmospheric science work, with its seminal contributions regarding the origin of carbon dioxide in the air, was nearly lost. This was evidently partly due to controversy with his chief rival, Belgian chemist Jean Servais Stas. Surviving copies of Koene’s primary works are so few that one wonders if the conflict led to suppression or even destruction of copies of Koene’s book. To remedy this situation, I translated his rarest book into English and published a bilingual edition in 2004 (Mellen Press) as “An English Translation of The Chemical Constitution of the Atmosphere from Earth’s Origin to the Present, and Its Implications for Protection of Industry and Ensuring Environmental Quality by C. J. Koene (1856).” I took this further with the 2007 publication of “Memoirs of Chemistry (1856) by C. J. Koene; a facing-page english translation of the french text Mémoires de Chimie.” I thus rescued both of these important books from near oblivion, saving them for future Stuart Pivar’s book, On the Origin of Form (2009), contains ideas that deserve full scientific scrutiny, especially in light of the turmoil roiling evolutionary biology at present. Pivar is presenting, in a series of brilliantly rendered graphical diagrams that show his interpretation of how modifications of a torus shape can generate a vast panoply of biotic form, a new theory of morphogenesis. Some conventionally oriented evolutionary biologists will feel threatened by this new perspective. Genes can no longer be seen as some kind of self-sufficient blueprint for metazoan organization. Rather, morphogenetic field analysis is needed to understand the morphology and ontogeny of a variety of creatures. Some of the transitional stages shown by Pivar will appear unfamiliar to embryologists, and may thus invite criticism of the model similar to the way that Haeckel has been criticized for his inaccurate drawings of embryos. I urge readers to suspend disbelief on this matter, however, for the purposes of full evaluation and honest scrutiny. We can’t afford to wait a century and a half this time, as was the case with Koene’s atmospheric science. Each of Pivar’s sub-models needs to be evaluated and tested from the perspective of adult morphology, fossil form, embryological change as modified by condensation, self-organization where appropriate, and finally, and all importantly, morphogenetic field analysis. This is a seismic event for science. Conventional evolutionary biologists are right to be very worried about this, because it has the potential to trigger the complete collapse of Modern Synthesis Biology. Discerning researchers will act now to stay clear of the falling wreckage. New research is urgently needed, and it is for a very good cause as it has the potential to inject life back into biology. For example, an undescribed type of Ediacaran fossil shows a morphology that is astonishingly in accord with the predictions and main tenets of the morphogenetic torus model. When this fossil is fully described and published, it promises to open a new window on how morphogenetic field analysis can help us understand both ontogeny and phylogeny in exciting new ways. TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES
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