International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

The structure and forms of a system.

The science of forms and their transformations.

The term was originally introduced by GOETHE (1749-1832), with the meaning of "Study of forms and their changes"(A. GOPPOLD, 2000, p. 101)

The subject has been extensively researched in botany through phyllotaxis (by the brothers BRAVAIS, by HOFMEISTER during the 19th Century and more recently other researchers (S. DOUADY and Y. COUDER, 1993), and more generally by d'Arcy W. THOMPSON (1916/1952) and, at a higher level of abstraction, by CH. LAVILLE (1950).

Morphology is, of course, the progressive and final result of a morphogenetic process or, in D. BOHM's terms, of a "generative order", a possibly more general notion, because BOHM's global "implicate order" embeds every possible type of morphogenesis. In D. BOHM and F. DAVID PEAT's words: "… the inclusiveness of orders, one within the other, is no longer a mere abstract subsumption in the sense that a more general category contains its particulars. Rather the general is now seen to be present concretely, as the activity of the generative principle within the generative order" (1987, p.164) (emphasis ours).

Morphological properties – as a typical systemic subject – show quite interesting isomorphies between numerous systems and organisms. These can be framed within very general underlying properties of energy fields and, at a still more abstract level by mathematical regularities through FIBONACCI series and the related Golden Section.

In a more specialized meaning, in linguistics and applicable to artificial intelligence, morphology is the study of word formation, derivations and flections.