fiefoe

Biology is clever, as Turing explains it.

In a cosmic scale, gravity is able to create and support huge heterogeneities. But down here, it is life that champions heterogeneity.
A cannonball on the very top of semispherical dome ... Why is this equilibrium destined to collapse so quickly? "This is easy," Ian rushes in. "The equilibrium is unstable, it has to do with positive eigenvalues of the local differential operator." Precisely. In layman's terms, the equilibrium will collapse for a thousand tiny reasons." {[Broken record:] We never even got to eigenvalues. Poor us.}
And this is one of the many tricks life uses to break symmetry, to break ties: It sets up an unstable equilibrium situation, then sits back and watches as symmetry is shattered.
The speed required (in the race of sperms) is such that chemical diffusion is no longer quick enough, electric currents and potentials are used. (Incidentally, there is another place where speed is achieved this way: The neuron.)
The winner is again triumphant-no ties in this game, no pyrrhic victories-the loser quits, it accepts its fate of becoming the right side. Not a bad deal altogether, of course.
Then the cells occupying the positions where the gaps between the digits are meant to be just die. They are singled out, ordered to die, and they oblige; interdigital indentations appear as if by magic. Death as an instrument of development.

"Turing"