Morphogenetic Fields Reimagined — Repairing Sheldrake through Relational Ontology: 3 The Embryo as Reflexive Event: Morphogenesis as Actualisation of Potential

1. From field to embryo

With the relational reframing of Sheldrake’s ideas in place, we can now examine morphogenesis itself.

An embryo is not a passive object acted upon by forces or genetic instructions. It is a system cutting itself into actuality. Every cell, tissue, and organ is a perspectival instantiation of the embryo’s relational potential.

The so-called “developmental program” is not a script to follow; it is the field of potential constraining and enabling its own actualisation. Morphogenesis is the reflexive emergence of form, not assembly from pre-existing parts.

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2. Instantiation as perspectival cut

In relational ontology, an instance is never a mere copy; it is a cut through systemic potential from a particular perspective.

When a cell differentiates, it is not becoming something fixed; it is actualising one construal from among the possibilities inherent in the embryo’s field.

Each event in development — division, migration, signalling — is a local actualisation. Its pattern is coherent because it aligns with the constraints of the system, but it is not predetermined in the mechanistic sense. Form emerges because the field permits certain configurations and excludes others.

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3. Differentiation as relational phase

The phenomenon we call “differentiation” is a phase of relational alignment.

• A tissue is not a collection of parts; it is a coherent phase of construal.

• An organ is not assembled; it is a nested alignment within the field of potential.

• The organism as a whole is not the sum of its parts; it is the topology of relational coherence actualised across scales.

Individuation occurs along a perspectival cline: the field individuates itself in local instantiations, which in turn constrain the next phases of morphogenesis. There is no fixed hierarchy — only recursive alignment of potential.

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4. Form as first-order meaning

Form is not an effect to be explained; it is the first-order phenomenon of relational actualisation.

• The shape of a limb, the pattern of a leaf, the folding of a neural tube: all are expressions of construal.

• Genes, signals, gradients are not blueprints; they are metaphenomenal readings of the relational field.

• Morphogenesis is a semiotic process: the organism makes meaning of its own potential in space and time.

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5. Reflexive alignment across scales

The stability of form arises from reflexive alignment, the same principle we used to repair Sheldrake’s resonance.

• Local cellular events align with the topology of the embryo’s field.

• Tissues align with the topology of the organism.

• Across generations, these instantiations recur, not through transmission, but through the persistence of relational topology.

This is the relational analogue of “memory”: the field re-actualises itself in coherence with its own potential.

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6. Implications for developmental biology

Viewed relationally, morphogenesis is not mechanical, programmatic, or informational in the usual sense. It is ontology in motion: the embryo as a system-theory actualising itself through reflexive, semiotic construal.

• Differentiation = local perspectival cut.

• Organogenesis = nested alignment of construals.

• Continuity across generations = re-actualisation of the same relational potential.

Form is meaning, and development is the act of meaninging itself.

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In the next post, “Resonance without Transmission: Reflexive Alignment as the Principle of Recurrence”, we will explore how the repaired concept of morphic resonance manifests in development and evolution, showing how form repeats not through temporal causation but through reflexive patterning of potential.