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"Form Follows Function, Function Follows Form" – the whole of your organic and psychological being is a great big feedback loop.
There are two main overlapping and interacting aspects to any healthy organism – described by the aphorism "Form Follows Function, Function Follows Form". For example, your brain structure determines how you can use your nervous system and think (etc.) - but your brain structure changes according to how you think, feel, move and use your senses. Similarly, the liver replaces and re-builds cells so that it is best adapted to break down the food you are eating; and with usage your musculoskeletal system will adapt to become as strong as necessary to match however you load it[1].
This mutual constantly self-regulating and self-adjusting feedback between physical anatomy and process determines evolution, embryological development, and every conceivable area of your life. The whole of your organic and psychological being is a great big feedback loop. If you wake up one day and realise that form and function is not the best it could be, the main materials you have to work with are part of the loop. The thing is to retain trust in the foundations of it all. "Form Follows Function, Function Follows Form" (or "6F") generated every living creature and plant on this beautiful and exuberant world, and that feedback loop is not some biblical tablet of stone. It responds with unimaginable creativity to the lightest of touches, provided that those feathers and butterflies wings are organised and directed according to the "rules" that made you. Those rules are (unfortunately) not well represented by the ones we have adopted in our culture, so health (and ill-health), personality, character, mental resilience (and instability) have the outward (culturally normative and false) appearance of being intransigent and fixed – and often dis-eased or dysfunctional.
This 6F relationship is visible all around you in the various body shapes that humans grow into. The way that you use your senses – which ones you refer to use, how you use them, which ones you least prefer – alters the way that you use your body (move) and the way that you orient to both your inner self and to the external world – which in turn changes the "form" taken up by the physical body. For various reasons (see "Three-Compartment Body Plan", later) there are three fundamental kinds of sensory preference. People who are more muscle-aware (mesomorphs[2]) use their muscles more, and wriggle around in the womb more than "average" before they are even born, thus growing into a fairly square and solid muscular body. "Ectomorphs"are more interested in external senses, and so tend to be tall and thin because their attention is – relatively speaking - hardly on the physical body at all. The third group (endomorphs[3]) are very aware of their internal physical visceral body as an emotive and sensory landscape, and so tend to be slightly more pear-shaped adults. All three types will swear on their mothers grave that they use all their senses. So it should be understood that this preference is both relative and marginal, and it’s usually more like a 36-32-32% split (perhaps at most 45-35-20%) – something hard to pin down given the limitations of English to describe internal and sensory experiences. Of the three generic types, the mesomorphs are more able to carry on even if overwhelmed because they are relatively more aware of their physical strength and presence. In contrast, endomorphs are generally speaking more affected by emotional overwhelm but are also usually more able to find supportive company. And ectomorphs find it relatively easy to be unaware of internal turmoil but far less easy to switch off from external stressors, because they are more likely to have lots of sensory aerials checking out the external world. Of course these generalisations are cardboard caricatures because everyone is a combination of all three in differing proportions and the differences in reality are quite subtle. Each innate sensory style carries its own strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly, is not a "life sentence", because the human sensory system and form is so malleable, the "function" so responsive to small shifts in how it is used, and the entire body-mind so intrinsically open to different usage.
The impression given by popular images of evolution is a final form, that carries little information as to function. But it is the function that has demanded the form, and honed it to something that is perfect – given all the other compromises that have to be reached within that process. The animal will constantly adapt its behaviour to get the very most out of the form that it has. So Darwin’s Galapagos Island finches may have evolved their beaks to suit different holes insects can hide in – but each finch will also "know" its own beak [4] and optimise what they have to how the environment demands it is used. Thus, higher-level adaptation (i.e. above the level of physiology and homeostasis) comes as both hard evolved adaptations (the Form), and soft behavioural (Functional) adaptations.
The principle of Form has a morphic identity that passes on generationally, through which individual cells know their task and place within this complex differentiated multicellular colony. It is a sort of identity that operates across biological, psychological, social and spiritual spaces. Sheldrake’s morphic resonance [5] might be considered to be a part of it, but it also relates to the sense of self-identity (including that expressed by the immune system), to "simple" genetics and to the way our organic self peers back into the past and somewhat into the future to organise its Form.
References & Notes
1 For example, long-term changes in loading will alter the thickness and density of skeletal bone. The shoulders can even become wider to accommodate the additional muscle. Bones rapidly become denser and more internally structured (Wolff's Law) and may then continue to expand and become thicker. Archaeological digs commonly use skeletal features to infer the owner's occupation. English archers had powerful arm bones twice the normal diameter, developed by training from childhood to use bows pulling up to 200 lbs. The hands of (living!) old farmers and labourers are often very large – I doubt this is always an inherited trait – but rather also an adaptation arising from use.
2 Mesomorph – a body shape that is fairly athletic, tends to be more muscle-aware and easily puts on muscle. See later – "Three-Compartment Body Plan". Note that these characteristic are very general and most people have a combination of body types.
3 Ectomorph – a tall thin body shape that tends to also go with a nervy, external-sensory focus and more emphasis on a mental or intellectual disposition. Endomorph – a pear0-shaped body that tends to also go with a greater awareness of the digestive system, and be more empathic. Note that these characteristic are very general and most people have a combination of body types. See later – "Three-Compartment Body Plan".
4 the finches are polymorphic and so instead of their beaks having a fixed shape the one genetic species grows many different beak shapes– a way of filling the greatest ecological space and being adaptive to changing food availability
5 Rupert Sheldrake (2009) Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation. Park Street Press; 4 Rev. Ed. ISBN-13: 978-1594773174