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Hypercyclic morphogenesis refers to the emergence of a higher order of self-reproducing structure or organization or hierarchy within a system, first introduced by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. in 1991 (Chap. 12). It involves combining the idea of the hypercycle, an idea due to Manfred Eigen and Peter Schuster (1979) with that of morphogenesis, an idea due to D’Arcy W.Thompson (1917). The hypercycle involves the problem in biochemistry of molecules combining in a self-reacting group that is able to stay together, posited by Eigen and Schuster as the foundation for the emergence of multi-cellular organisms. Thompson saw morphogenesis as a central part of the development of an organism as cell differentiation led to new organs appearing as it develops and grows. Alan Turing (1952) would study the chemistry and mathematics involved in such a process, which would also be studied mathematically by René Thom (1972) in his formulation of catastrophe theory.
Rosser suggested applications in political economy such as the emergence of the European Union out of the conscious actions of the leaders of its constituent nation states (1992), or the appearance of a higher level in an urban hierarchy during economic development (1994). It has been applied to the emergence of higher levels in an ecological hierarchy (Rosser, Folke, Günther, Isomäki, Perrings, and Puu, 1994), and it can be argued that the final stage of such a development for combined ecologic-economic systems would be the noosphere of Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1945).