The logic of health and disease resides not in genes alone, but in holistic, epigenetic regulatory networks in cells and in all organisms - networks that are coextensive with the external world and which require for a manifestation of wellness the presence of environments reflective of our inherited and conserved genetic and epigenetic capacities. Usually it was used to distinguish developmental complexity from the theory of 'preformation' which claimed that the becoming of complex organisms was simply a matter of growth of tiny preformed bodies In modern form preformation is recreated in terms of DNA and genetic programs within which developmental instructions reside. Of course, this version of preformation based on DNA as the transcendent aspect of information is also wrong. The new biological paradigm has an epigenetic basis. Choice' is no longer an anthropomorphic artifact, but an observable phenomenon.
Organisms display enormous fidelity in their developmental and growth patterns.
Memory, therefore, is an important characteristic of living things. Instead, it is distributed throughout dynamical system which themselves show enormous informational redundancy. Holistic memory must, therefore, be a primary characteristic of living systems. They do not represent mechanisms but rather new starting points for thinking about relations between form and function. Since these features are not approached by the present governing paradigm of biology, they also provide a new opportunity at the level of biological epistemology and make insistent the need for biological theory that goes beyond reductionism.