Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Because it unifies ontogenesis and phylogenesis, it is neither
Hippocratic nor Aristotelian in concept. Here, the organism is con-
structed from the global structure of the germinal cell including the
DNA and protein complexes and there is therefore material conti-
nuity. The germinal cell belongs to the two organisms, the old one
which is being reproduced and the new one which is being formed,
but it is not the reflection of the totality of the organism. It does
not receive molecules from all parts of the body, as is the case in a
Hippocratic theory; it is the result of its own history as a cell within
the organism. Each ontogenesis is therefore also the excrescence of
the germinal line as in Aristotelian theory (Fig. 32).
Ontophylogenesis allows us to escape from the fetters created
by these two types of theory in which biological thought has been
trapped throughout its history; and if it provides this new perspec-
tive, it is because it totally renounces specificity to make room for
probability. It does not depend on any principle of order which may
be inherent in matter or given
a priori
. The organism is produced
in its context by a non-finalist process in which environmental con-
straints act on intrinsically probabilistic molecular and cellular
mechanisms.
It thus forms a radical break because it is based on a new
metabiology. While in the Hippocratic and Aristotelian theories the
organism is a first principle, really or virtually the subject
a priori
of generation, in ontophylogenesis it is the random result of a
process without finality.
