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Symmetry-breaking dynamics in development

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Abstract

Recognition of the plasticity of development — from gene expression to neuroplasticity — is increasingly undermining the traditional distinction between structure and function, or anatomy and behavior. At the same time, dynamic systems theory — a set of tools and concepts drawn from the physical sciences — has emerged as a way of describing what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “dynamic anatomy” of the living organism. This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and psychology in order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions. I begin by introducing the concept of symmetry-breaking as a way of understanding anatomical development. I then extend this approach to motor development by arguing that the organism’s behavior grows along with its body, like a new organ. Finally, I argue that the organism’s behavior and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more complex and asymmetrical through its own increasing asymmetry. Thus development turns out to be a form of cognition or sense-making, and cognition a form of development.

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Notes

  1. Multicellular organisms also evolved from single-celled organisms. Thus the enactive approach also emphasizes the evolved character of both cognition and development (Thompson 2007). However, this article focuses not on evolution, but on development, which is many orders of magnitude faster and thus much easier to observe directly.

  2. For more on the relation between Merleau-Ponty and enactivism, including criticism in both directions, see Dreyfus 2002, Marratto 2012, Moss Brender 2013, Pollard 2014, Thompson 2007.

  3. On Merleau-Ponty’s method of using scientific sources for philosophical purposes, see Meacham 2014, Morris 2012, Rouse 2004, Toadvine 2009, Welsh 2006. My own use of empirical research is informed both by Merleau-Ponty’s method and by his results, which this article attempts to revise and build upon using more recent science.

  4. For more on Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of embryology and development in the Nature lectures, see Foti 2013, Hansen 2004, Morris 2008.

  5. For introductions to dynamic systems theory, see Norton 1995, Strogatz 2001.

  6. This focus on symmetry-breaking distinguishes my account from those of Johnston and Edwards (2002) and Lewis (2000), but I take the three accounts to be compatible and complementary.

  7. The role of symmetry-breaking in my account might usefully be compared to the role played by programs or algorithms in mechanistic accounts of development, but I lack the space to do this here. For criticism of the concept of “programs” in biology, see E. F. Keller 2000, Moss 1992, Oyama 2000, Robert 2004; and in the cognitive sciences, see Thelen and Smith 1994, van Gelder and Port 1995, van Gelder 1995, 1998.

  8. For more on the epistemological and ontological implications of these claims, and their relation to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of form (Gestalt), see Moss Brender 2013.

  9. For introductions to symmetry and symmetry-breaking, see Ball 2009, Mainzer 2005, Schmidt 2008, Stewart and Golubitsky 1992.

  10. Recall Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “physiological activity is a behavior facing an internal milieu” (Merleau-Ponty 2003, p. 179).

  11. See E. F. Keller 2000 on the current shift from structural to functional genomics (p. 7).

  12. Recall Merleau-Ponty’s claim that behavior “can be considered as a prolongation of the activity of an organism beyond its own body,” or “a physiological activity in external circuit” (2003, pp. 178–9)

  13. This mastery is equally a dependence and a vulnerability. Sensorimotor habits acquired in one environment can become a liability in novel environments, as demonstrated by the “moving room” experiments of Lee and Aronson (1974). Russon (2003) argues that this is the structure of human neurosis: embodied habits acquired in one context propel us into new situations to which these habits are no longer adequate.

  14. Recall the definition of symmetry as invariance under a transformation. We can think of the organism’s movements as transformations that reveal environmental (a)symmetries by generating variations and invariants in the organism’s perceptual field (Gibson 1950, 1965, 1986/1979). Which environmental (a)symmetries the organism discovers will thus depend on which transformations it applies (Moss Brender 2013).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, Canada

    Noah Moss Brender

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Moss Brender, N. Symmetry-breaking dynamics in development. Phenom Cogn Sci 16, 585–596 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-017-9521-3

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