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Individual cells in these early cell aggregates tend to associate with cells of equal or
comparable adhesivity, thus creating islands within “lakes of their less cohesive neigh-
bors” (
Newman and Müller, 2000
) separated by nonmixing interfaces between them.
Physical factors played a determining role in the formation of cell layers, spherical
and tubular structures, sheaths, and so on. The differential adhesivity and other physi-
cal processes may have been behind the formations of embryonic layers, gastrulation,
lumina, and various tubular structures, rods, spheres, segmentation, compartmentaliza-
tion, and three-dimensional patterning (
Müller, 2007; Newman and Müller, 2000
).
The existence of thresholds of activity of various inducers might have promoted
the emergence of morphological novelties up to the subphylum level. At this stage of
the evolution of multicellularity, genes were playing the role of “suppliers of build-
ing blocks and catalysis with little direct influence on the architectural outcome in
these pre-Mendelian systems” (
Newman and Müller, 2000
).
Over time, the physically determined morphogenesis was captured by the genetic
system. The advent of the pre-Mendelian mechanism of heredity made possible the
evolutionary stabilization of the physically determined biological forms. The pre-
Mendelian physical factors continue to retain, to various extents, their role in devel-
opment and are “of decisive importance even in contemporary ontogenies” (
Newman
and Müller, 2000
). Initially, Nature did not have to bother coding “for what happens
naturally in the physicochemical universe” (
Noble, 2011
).
The Control System Hypothesis of Evolution
The Control System in Animals
To function, animals require the creation and maintenance of a relatively constant
internal environment in which their cells can perform their normal functions. The
unavoidable and continued degradation of the animal structure and creation of a
“constant” internal environment requires the establishment of a dynamic equilib-
rium, in which the organism continually replaces the structural elements, molecules,
and cells it loses every moment.
To do this, the animal organism must be able to do the following:
●
Assess the amount of lost structures and the regions where they occur.
●
Generate and send to relevant regions, organs, or cells the information to compensate for
the lost structures and restore normal function.
These are basic functions of a control system. Human intelligence fails to imagine
how a living system, which is beyond compare more complex than any nonliving
system, would maintain its normal functioning state without a control system that
continually restores the system's normal state. Multicellular organisms could not
emerge until a control system for regulating and maintaining the multicellular struc-
ture in a state of dynamic equilibrium would be “invented.”
Common sense tells us that a living system, with its innumerable variables and
unmatched complexity, be it a unicellular ameba or a human being, must have a con-
trol system.
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