Morphogenetic field

In the developmental biology of the early twentieth century, a morphogenetic field is a research hypothesis and a discrete region of cells in an embryo.

[6] The Imaginal disc in larvae is an example of a discrete morphogenetic field region of cells in an insect embryo.

[1] Experimental support was provided by Ross Granville Harrison's experiments transplanting fragments of a newt embryo into different locations.

Thus the field hypothesis of ontogeny became fundamental in the early twentieth century to the study of embryological development.

In the late twentieth century the field concept of ontogenesis was "rediscovered" as a useful part of developmental biology.

Before the emergence of modern genetics, A. G. Gurwitsch analysed the embryonic development of the sea urchin in 1910 as a vector-field − a mathematical construct for analysis of remote effects − as if the proliferation of cells into organs were brought about by putative external forces.