The fifteen properties emerge directly from the unfolding of the whole

How should we view all this activity, and how should we interpret it? Biologists have, of course, accumulated a great deal of information about the way that chemical gradients, in the cells, create patterns by position. But what remains missing from their analysis is the way in which this thing moves forward as a whole, retains its coherence as a whole from start to finish, and how the coordination of the different parts, and the beauty of the whole thing, is maintained.

Once again, literal minded examination of what the individual cells do, as they split and migrate, does not account for the beauty of the unfolding process, nor for the beauty of the result.
Yet the beauty and coherence of the result is the most remarkable feature of the process.
The fifteen properties do emerge from an unfolding, which protects and enhances the whole, and in the differentiations which occur, as the whole develops, it is always the fifteen properties, one or another of them, which guide the differentiations. In effect, it is as if the kinds of differentiation which can occur, are enumerated, and restricted to the possibilities laid down by the fifteen properties. It is these fifteen properties which do all the work, of making the whole, and of making the whole beautiful. The chemistry and cell migrations are the mechanisms which do the work, but they are simply not the principal thing which is going on.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/1 The principle of unfolding wholeness in nature#