Abstract：
Focusing on the opposing ways of thinking of philosophers and scientists to explain the generation of form in biological development, I show that today\'s controversies over explanations of early development bear fundamental similarities to the dichotomy of preformation theory versus epigenesis in Greek antiquity. They are related to the acceptance or rejection of the idea of a physical form of what today would be called information for the generating of the embryo as a necessary pre-requisite for specific development and heredity. As a recent example, I scrutinize the dichotomy of genomic causality versus self-organization in 20th and 21st century theories of the generation of form. On the one hand, the generation of patterns and form, as well as the constant outcome in development, are proposed to be causally related to something that is \"preformed\" in the germ cells, the nucleus of germ cells, or the genome. On the other hand, it is proposed that there is no pre-existing form or information, and development is seen as a process where genuinely new characters emerge from formless matter, either by immaterial \"forces of life,\" or by physical-chemical processes of self-organization. I also argue that these different ways of thinking and the research practices associated with them are not equivalent, and maintain that it is impossible to explain the generation of form and constant outcome of development without the assumption of the transmission of pre-existing information in the form of DNA sequences in the genome. Only in this framework of \"preformed\" information can \"epigenesis\" in the form of physical and chemical processes of self-organization play an important role.
摘要：
着眼于哲学家和科学家的对立思维方式来解释生物发展中形式的产生，我表明，今天对早期发展的解释的争议与希腊古代的预形成理论与表观发生的二分法有着根本的相似之处。它们与接受或拒绝今天被称为胚胎生成信息的物理形式的想法有关，这是特定发育和遗传的必要先决条件。作为最近的一个例子，我仔细研究了20世纪和21世纪形式产生理论中基因组因果关系与自组织的二分法。一方面,模式和形式的产生，以及不断发展的结果，被认为与生殖细胞中“预制”的东西有因果关系，生殖细胞的细胞核，或者基因组.另一方面,建议没有预先存在的形式或信息，发展被视为一个从无形物质中产生真正新角色的过程，要么是通过非物质的生命力量，或通过自组织的物理化学过程。我还认为，这些不同的思维方式和与之相关的研究实践是不等同的，并坚持认为，如果不假设以基因组中DNA序列的形式传递预先存在的信息，就不可能解释发育的形式和恒定结果的产生。只有在这种“预制”信息框架中，“表观发生”才能以自组织的物理和化学过程的形式发挥重要作用。
