chreod

The biologist C.H. Waddington invented this term a generation or so ago (it is derived from two Greek words, one meaning "necessary", and the other meaning "path") He said that if we take, for instance, living creatures with legs we might expect to find creatures with one leg, creatures with two legs, creatures with three legs, etc. But we don't. Only some of these possibilities are found. This led him to claim that evolutionary development was structured or constrained by necessary paths, or chreods. Waddington wrote the foreword to the translation of Thom's book.


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