A proposed solution to one of the great mysteries of science is announced in the publication of "Embryo Geometry" by chemist and biologist Stuart Pivar, with illustrations by molecular biologist Peter Sheesley. The origin of the shapes and forms of the plant and animal body, long suspected to be encoded in the DNA and driven by natural selection, is demonstrated to derive instead from simple geometrical patterns formed by the dividing embryonic egg cells. We look on the primal symmetry of natural forms with wonder, in ignorance of their cause. This book reveals the step by step development of the embryo from a single cell by the formation and deformation of the bands of cells called the blastula—the barcode for the body. The many drawings also depict the topological origin of the regular skin patterns of birds, reptiles, fish and quadrupeds.
The origin of the vertebrate body form
Solve For X
I learned biology walking along the beach with Stephen Jay Gould. Steve’s life was the underground condemnation of Darwinian natural selection, the then-gospel of biology. Natural selection combined with the code for life in the DNA was the belief system of the so-called Modern Synthesis, upheld by a powerful academic cabal of scientists funded by the government to corroborate the Darwinian explanation of evolution and life’s beginnings. Researchers pursuing other ideas were publicly denounced in violent, slanderous rhetoric by a brittle oligarchy headed by Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and the rear brought up by rabble-rousing PZ Myers. While Gould remained vague in his vast popular writings, his 1977 magnum opus, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, is encyclopedic in non-Darwinian biology. My copy is inscribed, “Thanks for tackling my “real” book.”
The stunningly attractive symmetries of plants and animals and the gorgeous patterns on their surfaces led Goethe to famously wonder that some law must enable him to immediately recognize life against the dead rocky background. Twenty-five years ago, with these inspirations, and the assets of the study of mathematics and physics, I joined the race to discover the Goethean Urform. In short, a few months ago I found it. That is, a solution to the topological question: By what mechanical, geometrical rationale does the sequential binary subdivision of a cell generate the regular patterned forms of complex nature?
Satisfied that the solution is QED, and reasonably sure it is unique, this book was hastily assembled. A simple scientific paper presenting the solution to the theorem at the outset, and over one hundred-fifty pages of material generated along the way. In an absence of equations, mathematical or chemical, hundreds of “blueprints” illustrate the mechanical causes of the phenomena of organismic biology, purporting to solve problems of:
The origin of the pattern that shapes the body;
The origin of the bioelectrical net that controls movement.
The Origin of the Blastula
The first three divisions of the egg produces eight cells distributed equidistantly about the spherical membrane called the blastocoel, which forms at the center.
A second round of three divisions places eight cells in place of each of the first eight cells.
The sixty-four cells are compressed upon the surface of the blastocoel where they self-organize in circumferential bands, called girdles. The vertebrate blastula comprises seven girdles including an equatorial, two polar, and two pairs that divide the space between.
The equatorial girdle is the occipital region of the skull, the north pole, the nasal, the parietal and frontal between. The south pole is the sacrum, and the pair between are the pectoral and pelvic girdles which are uniquely recognized in biology.