Physical idealism

[Angrboda]

I was reading this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/04/health...index.html


And it got me to thinking. . . there must be a genetic pattern for a "toe," and then a counter of some type.  So you could arbitrarily (I assume) program a DNA sequence to have any number of toes or fingers, and yet, magically, they "turn out."  The baby's toes all look good, he's just got the wrong number of them.

In other words, the human body actually isn't completely represented in the DNA, but as a sequence of instructions ABOUT a human body-- for example, how many toes it should have.

Stuff to think about.

Number of toes is determined by the timing of the deployment of certain chemical signals. Watch Your Inner Fish episode one if you want to learn about it. DNA is frequently analogized more as a recipe than a set of coded traits. Each step represents an occurrence in the development of the organism, but there isn't a one to one correspondence between genes and traits.