Supracellular memory

At the supracellular level we know that there are deposits of information in the nervous system and in the immune system, and it is precisely because of this that we speak of a nervous system memory and of an immune system memory. 

These are the biological memories that we are familiar with, and if it were not for the mathematical model probably we wouldn t feel any need to look for others. According to that model, however, a multicellular system can have a collective memory , and this does raise the suspicion that a more general memory could exist. More precisely it makes us think about a supracellular memory to which all the body s apparatuses contribute, a true body memory. 

The mathematical model, in conclusion, allows us to add a new biological property to the Bauplan, an idea that can be expressed in this way a body plan is a supracellular memory, or the body plan is the body s memory. The proof that such an addition is not only new, but also useful, can come of course only from its power to solve real biological problems. One of which is precisely the problem of the Cambrian explosion. 

The existence of organs and apparatuses in an animal implies the existence of a body plan, and therefore even the most primitive animals (with the possible exception of sponges) had body plans. It is unlikely, however, that the very first animals could already use their body plans as deposits of information, i.e. as supracellular memories. We have seen that the embryonic development of many characters can be realised with two different strategies, a continuous mechanism (simpler) and a discontinuous one (more complex), and the simpler mechanism is also the one that comes first in the history of life. 

The model is dependent on the concept of supracellular memory, and it may be useful to keep in mind that the general properties of this collective memory not only correspond to real biological characters, but can also be simulated by a mathematical model. 

The crucial point is the idea that a body plan is simultaneously a phenotypic structure and a deposit of information. If information could be transported without three-dimensional structures, there would be no need to conserve three-dimensional patterns, but the information of a body plan is precisely about spatial organisation, and cannot be preserved without the three-dimensional structures which define that organisation. Traditional theories, in conclusion, have regarded the body plan exclusively as a phenotypic structure, not as a deposit of information (a supracellular memory), and it is this which has prevented them from explaining the conservation of the phylotypic stage. 

The biological equivalents of these strategies are two different kinds of embryonic development one which exploits only cellular memories, and another which also makes use, from a certain point onwards, of a supracellular memory (the supracellular memory can exist only from a certain point onwards, because it is built by embryonic cells which must have already gone through a transformation phase). 

So how do code and memory relate to the two-phase development of metazoans The first and most obvious connection, that Barbieri himself made, is that the construction of the phylotypic stage in each embryology represents a memory , what he calls the body plan supracellular memory. By using a tiny bit of code to arrange that the ovary makes oocytes of particular architecture from-and-within the structure of the adult, the next generation are started on their complexity-increasing way. 

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