In This Essay I Examine the Hereditary Mass and Its Two Ingenious Forms. IUse the Threshold Model as an Analytical Tool. This essay presents an alternative understanding of inheritance based on the thresholdmodel. Starting from the cell as an autonomous, self-sustaining continuum, it is arguedthat the hereditary mass consists of two forms: material inheritance (proteins, RNA, lipids,glycans, DNA) and continuum inheritance (the cell’s own recycling of itself). The zygoteis understood not as a beginning, but as a continuation—an already existing continuumthat receives new material and thereby becomes a new entity. DNA is placed as a passiverecipe book, activated only when the continuum crosses a threshold. The model fulfills thethreshold model’s requirements on all parameters and is thus logically consistent with aprinciple that applies across physics, chemistry, and biology.
Lars H. Hasselby (Wed,) studied this question.